12 Things about James Sirius Potter:

1. After Sandra died, James thought he'd never love again. Her death seemed to define him. There were three periods to his life, in his mind: boyhood, life with Sandra, after life. He never thought she'd die, never imagined he could be so unhappy.

Now, he doesn't remember what happy is.

2. Lily is his favorite sibling, but he'd never tell Al. He had honestly hoped as a boy that Al would be in Slytherin, so that he, the youngest Potter boy, would break the house feud. It was the only wound the Potter's had no hand in healing. James had even wished to be in Slytherin himself. It wasn't to be, and he never told Al he was proud of him.

James always hated to lie.

3. James is close to his dad. He told him once, Harry did, that he was like all the Marauders mixed into one. He was reckless like Sirius, honest like Remus, proud like James. Sometimes James wonders if he's not as much a coward as Peter Pettigrew. Sometimes he envies the man.

He's heard you forget who you are as an animal.

4. James loves jazz. He listens to Glenn Miller or Billie Holliday, and his whole world contracts into a place of peace that he's long forgotten. When Al, two weeks after Sandra's death left him numb in his bed of pain, dragged him to a smoky bar where a live singer was crooning bye bye blackbird, he cried his eyes out in the men's room for the first time. It finally hit him that he would never see her dark eyes and her silky black hair ever again. Al found him, and held him so hard he could barely breathe until his eyes were washed of all tears. It was the first sign of affection he ever shown his older brother that James could remember. He was smart enough to take him home and never mention it afterwards though. He never let him sleep past eight again either.

Al was always the Ravenclaw.

5. When he told the sorting hat he wanted to be in Slytherin to stop the house feud, it laughed at him. "You've got more brave than brains, kid" it had mocked, placing him in Gryffindor. It was right of course, but he's always hated the hat a little, for insinuating Gryffindors were less intelligent than Slytherins.

Sneakier maybe, but never smarter.

6. He can't tell a lie to save his life. Al and Lily find it endlessly entertaining, but he channels something of his Uncle Ron's spirit when trying to get away with something. His ears and face flush red and he stammers out an excuse that a child could see through. He gets caught easily because of it. By the time he'd left Hogwarts, he'd served more time in detention than any one student in the last twenty years before him had.

It never stopped him from playing pranks.

7. He loves quidditch, maybe not in the same way his mom or uncles do, but he loves going to games, loves spending lazy afternoons flying around looking for a snitch. He thinks his dad feels the same way, he plays the same position after all, but even though he could have, he never played professional quidditch either. When James becomes a healer, Harry is the only not even a little disappointed in him.

His dad always did understand him.

8. His dad gave him a big black motorcycle on his seventeenth birthday that had once belonged to Sirius Black. It was a beautiful bike, and he still rides it instead of any other means of transportation. He names it Persephone and Al gives him hell. "It's not a woman," his brother tells him, "and you are not the lord of the underworld." Sometimes Al just doesn't understand. Lily tells him it's a beautiful name and asks for a ride. Their dad is the one who shoots her down. He never wanted Lily to do anything dangerous.

He would have said yes.

9. James didn't like that Teddy was seeing Lily. He didn't like that six months since they'd been seeing each other, the twenty-nine year old man asked James's eighteen year old sister to marry him. He'd always been a little intimidated by Teddy, and he was almost sure the man his father considered like a son would hurt her. When he watched the way the always poised, always careful Lily threw herself over the table at Teddy, James decided to ignore his overprotective side.

It was time they let someone drive Lily crazy.

10. The first time he sees Sandra, he isn't interested. She's one of Lily's coffee house comedy club friends, a muggle girl with a big mouth and a loud laugh. She's pretty enough, he thinks at first, with big black eyes and her long, soft hair, tall and elegantly slim. He'd always been a breast man and she didn't have much of them, well shaped and lovely, he was sure, but not very big. She was funny though, and the sweetest kid he'd ever met. A nurse who specialized in neo-natal care. She would look lovely with a baby, he knew, be a wonderful mother.

One day it just hit him, he was in love.

11. The worst part of Sandra's death, he still thinks, is that it was so preventable. If he had been with her, he could have healed her easily and then wiped the memories of the witnesses. Instead, he was waiting at the restaurant, the box that held an engagement ring she'd never see burning a hole in his pocket as he tried to remember the words he'd rehearsed.

He still has the ring.

12. For about two years after her death, he couldn't date. When he wanted physical release, he'd go to a muggle bar where no one knew him and pick up a girl that reminded him in some way of her. It was Lily, who'd matched him up with Sandra, who set him up with his next girlfriend. Ellie was a sweet girl, a muggle-born Ravenclaw who Lily had tutored when Lily was a fifth year and Ellie in her third. She didn't look a thing like Sandra; she had strawberry blonde hair and big blue eyes and the biggest knockers he'd ever seen. She worked at Flourish and Blott's and knew enough about the muggle world he'd come to love to keep up with him. She loved jazz too, and even though it's been six girlfriends and countless dates since, he's still fond of Ellie.

He thinks that's why he stopped seeing her.