The worst day of James Potter's life
James was known in his dorm to be the first one up no matter how the night before had panned out. This morning was no exception as he was up by 5.
The exception this morning was that rather than do his usual morning run around Hogwarts and come back to the dorm to shower just as everyone else was waking up, he got out of bed and tripped over something one of the boys left out and smashed his face into Peter’s dresser waking everyone up.
“What happened?” Sirius shouted as he was startled from his sleep.
“Nothing, I’m fine. Go back to sleep.” James was still on the floor and didn’t want to bother anyone else.
The boys listened and they closed their curtains so James got up and went to the bathroom to assess the damage.
In the mirror, James saw that he’d gotten a rather large scratch on his face from the corner of the dresser that spanned from about an inch beside the right corner of his mouth to right next to his right eye. “Great,” James mumbled, reaching below to grab some disinfectant. He would have had Remus heal it for him, but as the moon approached, he needed his sleep. James used some of the muggle first aid Lily had taught him and managed to get it to stop bleeding and hoped that by the time he could get someone decent at healing spells to fix it, it wouldn’t scar.
When he put his glasses back on he noticed his right eye was seeing slightly blurrier than usual. “Great” he mumbled yet again.
After checking the time he saw that if he were to go running now he would have to go on a rather short one as it was already nearing 6 and he had a class at 8.
Deciding to just hop in the shower and get a headstart on some homework, James turned on the water and got undressed. While he was washing his hair he managed to get some shampoo in his eyes and couldn’t get the burning to stop for several minutes. He could tell his already blurry vision was worse even without his glasses.
The rest of his shower went as well as it could and once he hopped out and dried off he was already in a bad mood.
When the rest of the dorm woke up, James was trying to get his homework done. “This is so stupid!” James whispered to himself.
“What’s ‘so stupid’ James?” Remus asked, walking up to James. “And what happened to your face?”
“I fell earlier and scratched my eye, then I got shampoo in my eye in the shower and now everything is blurry even with my glasses.”
“I can heal your scratch so it won’t scar if you’d like, but I can’t help with the shampoo. It’ll go away eventually.” Remus held his wand up waiting for approval from James before casting the charm. “There you go.”
Remus went about his getting ready along with the other boys.
When everyone was ready they headed to breakfast. With James’ slightly worse than usual eyesight, he managed to miss the second step on the stairs and fall down them.
“Woah mate, you okay?” Sirius asked, running to meet his friend at the bottom of the stairs.
“Yep. Just splendid.” James was still on the ground, not ready to get up yet. When Sirius reached out a hand, James grabbed it and got up. “At least there are no injuries from this fall.”
“True. But your glasses may need a quick reparo .” Remus came up and did just that.
Breakfast passed with no more incidents and James thought his band day had started to turn around. He made it through his first-class unscathed and was about halfway through History of Magic when his lack of morning run was catching up to him.
His leg was bouncing so much he thought it might run off on its own and his brain was so hectic he couldn’t even process the words coming out of Professor Binns’ mouth. After what felt like an hour, James looked at the time and found only 5 minutes had passed. He didn’t think he could take another 20 minutes of sitting in this class.
After another minute or so, Sirius turned to James and noticed his restlessness. “You good? You look like you might explode.”
“Yeah, I missed my run this morning due to scratching my face on that dresser this morning. So my energy levels are off the charts. We have a break after this class right?” James was hoping he could get a run-in during lunch.
“We’ve got about 2 hours between this class and Potions.”
“Great. I’m going on a run after this. Would you mind bringing some lunch up to the dorm for me so I can eat afterward?”
“Of course. I’ll wait for about an hour so it’s still decent by the time you eat it.”
“Thank you.” James was slightly calmer with the knowledge of being able to get his energy out, and as the last minutes of class dragged past James was beyond ready to go.
After racing back to the dorm and changing into sweats, James was finally on his run and didn’t have a thought in his mind about his day.
Weaving through the castle grounds he was having the time of his life. Until he turned a corner slightly faster than he probably should have and ran face first into someone. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you. I shouldn’t have rounded the corner that fast. I’m so sorry.”
“Potter. What in the world are you doing running at this time of day?” James looked up and finally saw who he ran into, and of course, it had to be Snape. His terrible day was just getting worse.
“I'm sorry, Snape for running into you, but I really must be on my way.” James tried to run past Snape, but he stuck his foot out and tripped him, leaving James face-first on the floor for the third time that day.
“Why Potter, where do you think you’re going?” A second voice chimed from above.
“Avery, Snape, please just let me go.” James tried to get up off the floor, but Avery pushed him back down.
“Why would you think we’d just let you go? There’s no one over here to hear you. We can’t waste an opportunity like that, blood traitor.” Avery led the charge by stepping on James’ hands and Snape threw some minor cutting hexes at his chest, tearing his clothes and cutting his skin.
James didn’t have his wand so he couldn’t fight back with magic, but he could use his body so he started kicking the two boys. When James managed to get a decent kick to Snape’s groin and the hexes stopped, he was able to focus on Avery to free his hand. Once his hand was free and the boys weren’t paying attention due to their pain, James ran back to the dorm, shirt wet with blood.
Once he made it to his dorm he found his friends sitting on his bed, talking and waiting for him.
“James? Finished with your—” Sirius looked up at him and saw his shirt. “Merlin, James what happened?” He was next to James in just a moment, taking what was left of his shirt off and looking at the cuts. “Remus, can you help me?”
“Of course.” Remus was next to them with a wand already casting spells. “What happened, James?”
“I was running and turned a corner too fast and ran into Snape. So he and Avery decided that it was the perfect time to hold me down and hex me. I didn’t have my wand cause I was on a run and didn’t think to bring it so I couldn’t defend myself. I managed to kick them both and run away though. Now I’m here.”
“Oh my. This is just not your day huh?” Sirius was getting him some fresh clothes to change into. “You have enough time to shower if you’d like and we brought you some lunch too. Take your time. If you don't want to go to the rest of our classes we can take notes for you.”
“I think I’ll shower and eat then decide afterward. Thanks, guys.” James grabbed the clothes Sirius had for him and went into the bathroom again, desperate to wash off the first half of his day.
After managing to shower without any more incidents, James came out and ate his lunch while his friends continued to talk about whatever prank they were planning next.
“Hey Prongs, we’ve got to leave in about 10 more minutes for class if you’re joining us.”
“I think I’ll join. It’s potions with the Hufflepuffs, what could go wrong in there?”
Everything apparently.
Slughorn started class by introducing the potion and then made the class partner up with the other house to brew it. James’ partner, Lewis Shaw, had apparently not slept well the previous night and had slept through the lecture portion of the class. He put in several wrong ingredients which resulted in their potion exploding in James’ face. Lewis managed to avoid the blast entirely. Whatever he had put in there made the potion sting on James’ skin and harden once it landed on his face.
So now, James was sitting in the hospital wing (He thinks), with a plaster of stinging failed potion goop on his face.
“James, I think you should stay in the dorm for the rest of the day.” Peter was next to him somewhere, “This has to be some sort of sign to take a day to yourself. In bed. With no sharp objects or heights or anything remotely dangerous.”
James would have said he agreed, but his mouth was plastered shut and he couldn’t say anything.
“Okay, I’m back. Mister Potter. Luckily the stuff on your face seems to come off with some of this cream. Once it’s off I’ll keep you here for about an hour or so before you are free to go as long as no symptoms arise.” Madam Pomfrey started to spread the cream on the edges of the plaster to get it loose enough to pry off.
A few minutes later, James was free.
After the mandatory symptom-watching time, Madame Pomfrey sent James back to his dorm.
James, surprisingly made it back with no complications and decided a nap might fix his day.
He slept for 4 hours and woke up just in time for dinner. With his friends being overly cautious with James, he felt a bit overwhelmed with the amount of attention that was on him at the moment.
After dinner, the boys sat in their dorm and decided to play games until they turned in for the night.
James, though relieved that day was pretty much over, could not fall asleep. His nap had ruined his ability to sleep for the night. After a brief look at the map, James decided the go to the astronomy tower to have some time alone with himself to end the day.
“Hola abuelita, hoy probablemente fue el peor día de todos.” James often found himself talking to his abuelita in the stars on rough days. It helped to talk it out, and talking to himself was rather odd.
“Me caí tres veces hoy y terminé en el ala del hospital…” James talked to his grandmother and recounted the day's events to her. After he felt he had gotten it all out of his system, he sat and stared at the stars. While he may never truly understand them, he felt that he did.
Stuck in the sky for everyone to see shine, although by the time they are seen, they have been dead for a long time.
James sat in silence for a while ultimately turning to leave when a shadow in the corner got his attention. “Oi, who’s over there?” He asked the darkness.
When no one responded, he walked closer and saw a glimpse of the figure's green robes and black hair.
“Regulus? Is that you?” James asked. The smaller boy had never really talked to James all that much, but James knew him from the tales Sirius would tell.
Regulus walked out from the shadows and into the light where James was. “I’m sorry. I was about to leave.” Regulus turned to walk down the stairs when James reached his arm out to stop him.
“You don’t have to go.”
James had never interacted with the younger Black, but the feeling in his chest when he touched the boy was enough to make him wish to.
After a moment of neither boy leaving Regulus stepped out of James’ touch to go sit on the edge of the balcony where James just was.
“You can sit, Potter,” Regulus said after a moment of James standing there awkwardly. “I won’t bite.”
James laughed at the comment and went to sit next to the Slytherin. “What are you doing up here so late?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Regulus said defensively.
“I had probably the worst day of my life.” James provided.
“This is the closest thing I have to talking to my brother,” Regulus spoke quietly enough that James could barely hear him.
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“He ran away from me. I think he does.”
“No, he ran away from your parents.”
“He still left me behind.”
“There’s always room for you at my house. I know what your parents did to you guys.”
“Potter. I’m plenty capable of handling myself thank you very much.”
“But you don’t have to ‘handle yourself’. If you ever want to get out, my offer stands.”
They sat in silence for a while longer before Regulus spoke up again.
“I have to stay. If I leave, they’ll come after us both. They only need one son. Keeping Sirius safe is all that matters to me.”
“I promise you that regardless of if you leave or not, Sirius will remain safe.”
“You don’t know that.” Regulus’ voice sounded like it was on the verge of breaking. “You can’t know that.”
James turned to look at the younger boy and saw that silent tears were falling down his face. Not sure if Regulus was okay with James’ touch, he reached his hand towards where Regulus was sitting on the ground. He touched their pinkies together, offering the simplest comfort of knowing someone else was there.
Regulus didn’t accept to reject the touch and James took it as a win.
After nearly 30 minutes of sitting in silence, the two boys decided that it was late.
“It’s late, Goodnight Regulus.” James walked towards the stairs to go back to his dorm.
As he was leaving he heard a nearly silent “Goodnight, James.”
Maybe the worst day of James Potter’s life didn’t have to have a terrible ending.