Happy endings aren't for those destined for greatness. I've been alive and in control of my life for twenty years and I've just come to that life altering conclusion.
My confidence and character came directly from my father. There wasn't an argument he couldn't lose and there wasn't a person he wouldn't defend with his life. That's also where my super hero syndrome – as Lily so graciously called it – originated. I was on the fast track to becoming an accomplished Auror as a top student in everything at Hogwarts and with any luck, destined to be a part of the Wizengamot by the time I turned thirty. I oozed a certain boldness that has made it difficult to become close with a lot of people over the years, but that has gotten me out of a lot of scrapes too.
Dumbledore once told me that I was not chosen as prefect in my fifth year because I was too driven, hard, and unwilling to let anybody outside my group of friends see the real me. The real me? I figured he was implying my bravado was all for show, but I soon figured out exactly what he meant. Sirius' prank on Snape in our sixth year – a prank that forever changed the chemistry between us – was the turning point in my young life. It was then that I put aside my dislike for the greasy git and acted like any decent wizard would have. In short, I saved his life and proved to everyone that I wasn't just the arrogant know-it-all Gryffindor Quidditch captain they had all come to love and loathe over the years.
Once I became reachable to the masses, so to speak, the tenderness – or as Sirius likes to call it, pansyness – which I only displayed at home with my mother, came out in full bloom. I was suddenly the sensitive and understanding guy friend all the girls wanted advice from and that inevitably led to Lily acknowledging my presence as something other than the dirt at the bottom of her shoe.
At the tender age of seventeen, I was a man among boys. Sirius envied my sensitivity, Remus envied my confidence, and Peter envied everything that I proudly stood for. With those credentials looming over me, I was destined to be a somebody. Not just anybody, but someone that would change the world. After all, it is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.*
My father envisioned me as the next Albus Dumbledore; the next powerful and untouchable being that would lead all witches and wizards past the war of our lifetime and into a better tomorrow. He believed it with everything that he was and my mother did nothing to contradict him.
I was sent abroad to study under some of the greatest witches and wizards when I was eight years old and although I didn't really learn magic until I went to Hogwarts, these giants were teaching me how to be a leader. Everything was going according to plan until Voldemort began terrorizing the country. I was to have had a career that would be the envy of all those I was to surpass, and I was to have become the hero that saved the wizarding community and Muggles alike.
Except wars have a tendency to start when you're not expecting them, and the bad guy always attacks when the opposition is weak.
Voldemort was quickly gaining strength and followers and the Ministry was powerless against him. Albus Dumbledore - try as he might - was unable to make everybody see the threat Voldemort was posing. It wasn't enough that this evil wizard was terrorizing innocent Muggles and killing off every able and willing Auror in his way; the Ministry simply didn't think it was the right time to build a stronger resistance.
When Dumbledore approached me with an offer to be a part of the Order of the Phoenix, I blindly agreed, knowing that it was my destiny to fight off the threat to our lives. It was only after Dumbledore let me in on the gory details of the missions required as a member of the Order that I began to have second thoughts.
By joining the Order of the Phoenix, I was going to be giving up my position at Auror training, and without that, I was never going to fulfill my destiny or be a part of the Wizengamot. By agreeing to help Dumbledore, I was saying good-bye to my life.
But the choice was easy and yet so achingly hard. Knowing that Lily, Sirius, Remus and Peter would a part of the Order made that pill easier to swallow, but I couldn't help thinking how being so noble was going to cost me the life I had worked so hard to build for myself. There would be no book written about the great James Potter, Chosen One, Warrior, and Greatest Wizard of all time.
One look into Lily's eyes though, and I knew I had made the right decision. Dumbledore was the greatest wizard of our time, and to succeed in whatever he was planning, then I would have to settle with being a simple part on the road towards the greater good.
When greatness is expected of you from day one, your reputation goes a long way to precede you. It was beyond my scope of understanding that I would ever be anything but a good guy; for generations the Potters had fought for the betterment of wizard kind or died trying. It was with much bewilderment then, that my first chance meeting with Voldemort himself got me thinking.
Naturally, he had heard of me and what I was meant to be. Knowing I wasn't much of a threat to him under my current standing made him confident and cheeky around me. It was a proposition I couldn't refuse; an offer so great that I couldn't possibly keep fighting for the other side because the bad guys were obviously going to win.
He made me consider my position for about a split second, wooing me with the prospect of fulfilling my destiny beside him. Only he forgot to mention that my destiny was to destroy him, not work with him.
Sirius and I had just finished looking around a large abandoned building; our job was to do some reconnaissance work around Diagon Alley to look for traces of suspicious activity. But we hadn't counted on the Death Eaters waiting for us. We hadn't counted on being outnumbered ten to one.
Thinking fast on our feet, we attacked them with as many curses and hexes we could think of all the while looking for an exit. Sirius performed an excellent leg locker curse on one of them and I saw him run towards the high street. Thinking I could do the same, I unleashed a rather nasty blasting curse but the incantation never reached its victim.
It was only after I was put under a full body bind and gagged that I realized with a slight edge of panic that the Death Eaters had deliberately let Sirius go in order to take me hostage. The Death Eater that was holding me – with more force than was needed considering I was restrained – then levitated me against a wall in the alley and held me there as Voldemort made his presence known.
They say that loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice*, but I never understood that more than in that moment.
A lesser man would have succumbed to whatever fate had in store for them in a moment such as the one I was presented with, but not me. I was loyal and faithful and would never sell my friend's lives for my own. I won't lie and say I wasn't tempted to go along with whatever brilliant plan Voldemort had in store for me just to get out of there alive, but there was a reason for that meeting. It was a test.
I could see it playing around in Voldemort's face; he wanted me, he had wanted me on his side and nothing was going to stop him.
And I would have been great for his side. Like Dumbledore said, I was hard, driven and never let many people see the real me. I was also bold, outspoken and willing to do anything to make things happen. Voldemort knew this; he had been watching me for some time. He had visions of me as his secret weapon; the one that could flatten Dumbledore for him so that he wouldn't have to. And I could have. In time, I could have.
Voldemort saw me as this great warrior that would march through the slaughter and lead his Death Eaters into battle, bringing all those who once trusted me to their knees. He wanted me because he knew that there wasn't one person in my generation whose whole life was centered around being great and accomplishing great things.
Voldemort wanted me because I was everything he wanted to be.
I had old blood; pure blood that he coveted. He tried to make me see that I could do anything I wanted with my blood and my talents. He wanted to make me understand that Dumbledore was holding me back; that Dumbledore was masking my full potential by re-directing my destined path.
"You are capable of greater things than you realize," he explained in that silky voice that has made many before me give up their souls.
He said all the right things, he made all the right offers, but his words did nothing for me. There was a time when his words would have perhaps gotten to me in a way that would make it difficult for me to turn him down, but that was a long time ago.
I wasn't the cocky, selfish boy of fifteen that would have watched an innocent person dangle by the ankles in order to get my laughs in. I was a strong, twenty year old man with a wife and child on the way that would do anything to protect those I loved.
There was a glimmer of disappointment in Voldemort's eyes as I made my final decision, but he did not push for an explanation. He could have killed me on the spot; made all of those around me vulnerable and desperate upon learning of my extinction, but he simply set me down, removed the body bind and bade me farewell.
It was a formal affair, and he used a tone that suggested he looked forward to meeting me in the future. And I was absolutely positive that we would. Greatness follows greatness, and what else was Voldemort if not great?
*John Steinbeck
*Woodrow T. Wilson