A/N: Obviously I did not invent this magical world of awesomeness. All credit goes to Rowling!

Hey guys,

Thanks so much for reviewing and voting! It was a 5-2 for James so this chapter is a walk down in James's memory lane. I hope I did him justice and I know you're going to be as excited about the next few chapters as I am after this one. -grins- I've written a scene from James's first year, second, third and fifth year and a scene in the "present". Hope you all enjoy!

Chocolatefish: I think I fixed the mistake, but thanks again for pointing it out! I have no idea why I keep mixing Rose and Lily up. Sigh. I need to reread my chapters more carefully before I upload them ;)

Keep the reviews coming, guys! I love hearing from you!

As always with love,

Kelly

19: The moment when I - James Potter - took over

I remembered the first time I saw the little spitfire. She'd been standing next to the Hogwarts Express, a big and surly looking man next to her. Her mother stood in front of her, fussing about her hair and I remembered thinking how annoying I would've found that if my mum had decided to fuss so much. But the girl hadn't seemed bothered at all by it. She soaked the attention up with a brilliant smile that somehow captivated me. I had no idea how long I stared at the scene in front of me or if it was even creepy for me to do so. I could hear the whispers all around me. "That's James Potter?" "I wonder if he'll end up in Gryffindor as well?" "Do you think his father is around here somewhere?" "James Potter's sitting there." I had already lost count of how many times I heard my name outside of my safe compartment door. I looked at the family again. The brown haired girl gave her mother a brilliant smile and somewhat timidly said goodbye to her father.

The mother had tears in her eyes, but the father just kept looking on his watch obviously wanting to leave already. I wondered what it'd must be like, living in a normal family. Being part of something that was entirely yours without the wizarding world following your every move. I sat back as soon as the girl had moved out of view. I wondered if I'd be put in the same House as her and if so, would she talk to me as a normal human being? Or would she treat me as the son of the marvelous Harry Potter? I rolled my eyes. Who was I kidding, nobody was going to treat me for who I was.

I didn't even have my own name, for Merlin's sake. I got named after the brave and mischievous James Potter. I put my head against the window and watched people say goodbye to their loved ones.

I was drowning in other people's expectations of me and there was nobody anywhere teaching me how to swim.

I hadn't thought of the girl much in the following weeks thereafter. I had ended up in Gryffindor - naturally - and had made one other friend, besides cousin Fred. Oscar Wood was everything I could have hoped for. He was still somewhat awed by my presence, but as the weeks passed he seemed to slowly get over it well enough so I let things alone. I decided to follow in my grandfather's footsteps as the new prankster of the school. We were just putting our brilliant plan in motion during Potions when I noticed we had this class with the Hufflepuffs. Okay, okay, I know it was quite late for me to notice I had classes with the Hufflepuffs after a couple of weeks, but I had a lot on my mind back then okay?

Anyway she was just sitting there, right in front of me, and I just faltered. I put the bubbling bomb I was about to throw back down. If thrown the bomb would blow soap bells everywhere, capturing people in them so they had to walk around like a hamster in its running wheel. It was one of my uncle's latest inventions and I had been itching to test it out. That stupid bomb wasn't even really the point. The point was that the girl I had been unashamedly staring at on our first day of school was talking about me.

"Cassandra, honestly, you shouldn't ask him that," I heard her whisper furiously.

The blonde next to her shook her head. "And why not?" she asked, pulling her hair in a bun.

"Because that's just plain rude," she said.

"Rose," Cassandra said with an annoyed tone to her voice, "it's not rude if I ask it politely."

So her name was Rose? She shared the same name as my cousin, but for some reason I thought it suited her better.

"You cannot ask if he's got a lightening scar on his bum politely, Cassandra. For Merlin's sake leave the poor boy alone. I'm sure he's got enough of people treating him differently because of his name. He doesn't need your weird ass fetishes on top of that."

I blinked at that. Why would I have a lightening scar on my ass? What?

"You're no fun at all," Cassandra sulked.

From that moment on the Hufflepuff never left my sights again. I found myself looking for her in the Great Hall during mealtimes and in the hallways. It was ridiculous how quickly she became my anchor of all things normal. When I was about to explode she'd appear in the same room or corridor and I'd magically calm down again. Oz, who honestly was too smart for his own good, thought my obsession quite unhealthy. We were talking about this very same thing in our second year, on our way to the library, when it happened.

"You don't understand," I muttered, feeling my cheeks redden.

"No, I don't," Oz agreed. "Just because she didn't want to know what your ass looks like naked-"

"It's not only that," I cried, interrupting him quickly. My naked butt really wasn't a conversation I wanted to have in public. "She doesn't treat me like a Potter."

Oz raised an eyebrow. "But you are a Potter."

"I am well aware of that," I snapped, "but she doesn't try to use my friendship to get higher up in the social hierarchy of this school or something."

Oz laughed at that. "One, you sounded like a total girl when you said that and two, you're not even friends, James. There's no friendship to speak of between you two."

I bit my lip and just shrugged. I couldn't really explain my fascination with the girl, just that I really, really liked her and the fact that she didn't treat me any differently from any other wizard.

"Oh, look at that," Oz grinned, making me look up quickly.

There she was. Cassandra was whispering something in her ear and Rose seemed to nod her head nervously. She took a step forward, toward me, before she shook her head and wanted to turn around again.

"Oh, this is gonna be good," Oz murmured to himself.

I wanted to smack him.

"Don't be such a wuss," I heard Cassandra say, before she pushed Rosemary toward me.

She was biting her lip and walked quickly toward me. She started saying something about being really sorry and something about boys. She was beet red by then and kept biting her lip, something I knew she did often when she was nervous.

"And I'm really sorry about this - but Cassie and I thought that it'd be better just to get it over with. And I'm not even really sad that it's you - boys are so weird anyway - please don't hit me," she jabbered away.

Hit her? What? I opened my mouth to ask her what was going on, when she grabbed my shoulders and I completely froze. Before I knew what was happening, she had pushed her lips against mine.

Okay. I panicked. I put her hair on fire with a whisk of my wand, making her scream and jump away from me in fright. I took a step forward to help her out and tell her that I was so, so sorry, but she had already run off before I had even opened my mouth.

Oz, of course, thought this all hilarious. He sat on the ground, arms around his stomach as tears poured down his face. "That," he laughed, "was awesome."

Yeah, I didn't think so.

From that moment on Rosemary tried to avoid me whenever she could. She averted her eyes and lowered her voice, whenever we crossed paths. I had turned the only unique witch in this school into one of the masses. She treated me now like everybody else did and I hated it. It was in third year that I found my solution for this pesky little problem.

One of our pranks had been badly aimed - I still blame Fred for this - and hit her right in the chest, making her tap dance and squeak like a pig as she did so. It was hilarious, but she didn't seem to think so. As soon as the curse wore off, she marched down the Great Hall and stood in front of me. A wee spitfire she was back then, she still is, honestly, as she started shouting her head off. She pushed me in the chest and asked me if I liked humiliating people like that.

I still don't know why I did what I did next.

"Not at all, Woodstock," I told her with a grin, "I only like humiliating you."

She huffed at that and narrowed her eyes into tiny slits. "You're a pig, Potter."

I grinned like a fool as she walked away from me.

From that moment on I never let an opportunity pass me by to prank her. It was with one of those pranks in mind in our fifth year that I looked for Fred and Oz. I had checked the Marauder's map - don't even ask - and found them both in our dormitory. I was ascending the stairs at a rapid pace and was about to throw the door open, when I hesitated.

It was unethical to listen in to other people's conversations, but my Potter senses were tingling. Something told me that this wasn't the time to barge in on them like a barbarian. I listened.

"Honestly, Oscar, I don't know what you expect me to do about this?" Fred sounded exhausted, I thought.

"How about you start being honest about things, Fred Weasley? How about that?" Oz had the patience of a saint, I knew, which only perked my interest even more. What had Fred done to make Oz so angry?

I heard something being thrown around in the dorm. "I can't, Oz. I just - I can't."

I softly opened the door to peek in. They stood almost nose to nose now.

Oz reached up and touched Fred's face, making my eyes widen as comprehension slowly dawned on me. Was I seeing what I thought I was seeing? No way, right?

"Yes," Oz whispered. "Yes, you can."

And they kissed.

My best mates were kissing each other. I took a step back and let the door softly fall closed behind me. I sat down on the stairs and stared blankly ahead of me. Wow.

I slowly started to grin as I realized what had just happened in there. This did explain some of the tension in our little threesome lately and why Fred had been behaving like a real tosser to girls the last few days.

Good for you, Oz, I thought with a grin, wondering when they were going to tell me.

We were now two years later and they still hadn't told me. From what I gathered from Oz's little play acting with Rosemary, which I totally wanted to break his nose for by the way, they had broken up already. I knew it was beyond petty of me to feel left out and insulted by all of this. But honestly? Oz could tell Rosemary about this, but not me? What did he think I was going to do? Kick him out of the cool kids' club? Honest to Merlin.

I watched her as she sat at my desk in my room. She was writing to Cassandra on that parchment Fred had given her. I made no illusions about their so called relationship, Oz's and Rose's that is. I saw them whispering to each other when they thought nobody was looking and those conversations weren't of the lovey dovey nature either.

They were using each other to make their exes jealous and I was just waiting for the next Great Wizarding War to break out over this. Fred had been in an outright prissy mood lately and Taran, well, that sod couldn't be arsed really. It made me want to track him down in a dark alley and beat the living daylights out of him.

I closed my eyes and leaned back against my bed. This was all such a mess.

Later that evening we were called down for dinner and I sat next to my father for a change. We talked about everything and nothing really, but I kept Rose in my sights. She had been... off since the letter her mother had written her. She gave my mother a smile in response to something she said, but the smile never reached her eyes. I couldn't help myself, I worried.

I felt my father nudge me in the side. "She's a nice girl," he winked.

Oh, Merlin, no. "She is," I said quietly, urging him to do the same.

"Too bad she's dating Oz, isn't it?" My father's eyes twinkled and I rolled mine.

"Too bad," I agreed.

He slapped me on the shoulder, pulling me closer to him. "I'm glad for you, son. She's a great girl."

"She's also dating my best friend," I reminded him, silently wondering how long that masquerade was going to last anyway. Good thing I knew Oz was gay or I would probably have gone absolutely mental over all of this.

My father softly laughed at that. "She's also dating your gay best friend, you mean."

I looked at him sharply.

He simply gave me another one of those infuriating winks. I suddenly knew why Rose always got so ticked off when I did that. Huh. "What do you think I am? Stupid? The way they sneaked off last Summer? Please."

I laughed at that. "Yeah, subtlety isn't their strong suit."

"Nor is it yours, son," Dad said with a smile. When I didn't reply, he gave me another nudge. "She handled that news article well, didn't she?"

"She raged for about two hours," I said, amazed. How she managed to hold on to her anger for so long was beyond me. I got angry for about five minutes, before I wanted to make amends. I had always been like that, but Rose was the complete opposite it seemed. And an angry Rose was so amusing. I knew that said quite a lot about me and my mental stability, but Rosemary was hot when she was fed up with me.

Dad grinned. "Your mother tried to curse the reporter when she got mentioned in her first article. So considering, I think your girlfriend did well."

I groaned. "Dad..."

"What?" he started. "It's obvious that you want her to be, but you're just as clumsy about it as I was back in my days." I really didn't like where this was heading. He wasn't going to give me the Chang story again, was he? "You have to go after what you want before a Diggory comes along and snatches her up."

I sighed. This was always his advice. We had all heard the story about how Cedric Diggory and my father fell in love with the same girl, but how Diggory got to her first because my Dad was too much of a wimp to put himself out there. That was also the only thing he ever wanted to say about Cedric. He never mentioned his death or the Triwizard Tournament. It was kind of sad, I guess, knowing your father had scars you couldn't help him with.

"Just go after her, son. You have my blessing."

Rose didn't strike me as the girl who liked to be chased. She was always the one in charge, like the good little control freak she was. I told him so.

Dad chuckled. "How do you know if you don't try? Pranking her is obviously not helping your cause."

Hm. I looked at Rose, quietly drinking her in as I did so. Maybe Dad was right, maybe I should start to give chase.