Chapter 1
On the White House roof, on the edge of the Solarium, there’s a bit of loose paneling. If a mischievous child of the current residents happened to hit it just the right way, it would peel back to reveal five words jaggedly etched with a key or perhaps a stolen letter opener from the oval office.
Throughout the many First Families that have passed through the house who wrote the phrase has never been confirmed. Some swear that it was Jack Ford, with his split-level room with access to the roof for late-night smoke breaks giving him the perfect opportunity. Others swear that it was Luci Johnson, with a thick ribbon in her hair blowing in the wind as she carved. The only thing everyone agrees on is that only a presidential son or daughter would be daring enough to deface the White House. Still, the writer stays a mystery, and the phrase has become a mantra for those curious enough to find it.
James found it within the first day. He’s never told anyone how. The phrase reads:
Rule 1: Don’t Get Caught.
The East and West Bedrooms on the second floor are usually reserved for the First Family. Originally, they were designated as one large bedroom for visits from the Marquis de Lafayette during the Monroe administration, eventually, they were split into the bedrooms they are now. James occupies the one in the East, across from the treaty room. Remus occupies the one in the West, next to the elevator, an easy escape for the late evening walks he often takes.
Back when Remus had first come to live with them in Texas, their rooms were arranged the same way, on either side of the hall. Back then, you could tell Remus’ interests more from what hung on his bedroom wall than you could from speaking to him. At 14, lunar calendars and star charts lined the ceiling and walls. At 16, clippings from numerous journals and quotes from authors he considered great, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, and Ray Bradbury, littered the navy walls.
James' room has been the same since he was a child, only changing to factor in the accumulating lacrosse trophies and AP/honors assignments piling on the maroon-painted desk in the corner. James has always been a sentimental person, keeping small notes scrolled on the corner of assignments that are meaningless to onlookers but make him laugh at the memory the notes provide him with, or a poorly drawn portrait from Peter on the back of a test, or photos of himself, Pete, and Remus when they were kids, photos that he doesn’t necessarily want to display but that he can’t fathom getting rid of. James keeps all of these things in a box on a shelf in his closet so he can remind himself of the carefree kids he and his friends once were. But he keeps perhaps his most sentimental possession on a long chain around his neck.
Hidden below his polos or dress shirts, but worn at all times, lays a key to the Potter’s house in Texas. James has worn it since the moment his family had to leave for DC. The Potter house was in a rural community near a small lake, but when his mom was campaigning they had moved to a smaller house in a larger city, yet kept the one that held Jame’s childhood memories. James hates to think about all of their possessions just sitting there collecting dust.
Now, Remus’ room is painted all an espresso brown with deep green velvet accent chairs, pressed plants in old wooden frames, and piles upon piles of books, photographed by Vogue and inspired by the influence of who he famously called a “librarian witch” who also goes by the name of Dorcas Meadows. James’ room was once the nursery for Caroline Kennedy, and, later Nancy Reagan's office. The latter of which caused Dorcas to refuse to let him inhabit the room without her cleansing it with sage before. He’d left up the landscape paintings above the sofa, but painted over Sasha Obama’s pink walls with a deep red.
For the past few decades, the President’s children hadn’t lived in the residence past the age of eighteen, but James started at Georgetown the same year his mother was inaugurated, and according to Lily Evans, finance genius, it made more sense not to split their security or costs to whatever apartment he would have been living in. Remus would never say it, but James knows Remus moved in just to keep an eye on James, instead of following Lily to NYU. Remus knows how much James loves being this close to the action and has forcefully pulled James out of the West Wing on more than one occasion.
Sometimes, James feels like he can’t be himself in the privacy of his own home. Not that he would tell anyone that, he tells himself it’s a secret he’ll take with him to the grave. But behind the privacy of his bedroom door, he can play Billie Joel from his record player in the corner and pretend he's watching his parents dance to Vienna around their kitchen from the dining room table. He can wear the glasses his stylists so often make him trade-in for contacts. He can make as many finely detailed study guides with color-coded sticky notes as he wants. He’s not going to be the youngest congressman elected in history without them, but no one needs to know how hard he worked to get there. His sex-symbol image would drop in a snap.
He’s interrupted his making of one of those study guides by Remus standing in his doorway. “Hey,” Remus says, walking towards James’ bed with a stack of magazines tucked under an arm carrying two cell phones and the other hand carrying a plate. He closes the door behind him with a swift kick.
James puts a stack of papers on his nightstand and motions for Remus to sit. " What’d you take today?”
“Assorted donuts,” He says as he sits. He’s wearing dark coffee-colored dress pants with a crème button-down shirt with a rounded unbuttoned collar and chocolate-colored oxfords paired with a silver chain pendant of a star gifted to him by a fling from a few summers ago in France and a few rings on each of his hands. James can see next week's fashion column headline already: a picture of Remus’ outfit today and a quote from him saying “Dress for the job you want, for me that's a sexy librarian”.
Remus dumps the pile of magazines onto the bed in front of James and hands him a jelly-filled donut. Remus picks one up and starts reading it.
“Doing your part in keeping the American-wide gossip chain alive?”
“That's what my journalism degree is for,” Remus replies, not even looking up.
“Anything good?” James asks.
"Let's see," Remus flips through the magazine. "In Touch says I'm dating a French model."
James smirks. "Are you?"
"I wish." He flips the page and laughs.
James moves to look at the page and Remus moves it out of view. "What?"
"They're saying you got your asshole bleached!" He says between laughs.
James grabs another donut and takes a bite. "That one's true." He says through a mouthful of chocolate frosting and pastry.
"Thought so," Remus responds without looking up. He flips through the rest of the magazine before picking up a new one. "Not much about us this week...Oh! I'm a crossword puzzle clue."
James snorts. "For what word? Nerd?"
Remus in turn swats him with the magazine he's holding.
Following their media coverage is what Remus would consider a hobby, albeit one that both annoys and somehow amuses their mother but a hobby nonetheless, so James figures it gives him the right to make fun of Remus a little, James is his brother after all. Which is what caused Remus' hobby to grow in a way. Back when their mother had campaigned, her Republican opponent created a rumor of her being an unfaithful wife, after all, how could she have one son who was brown and one white if she were faithful? Because adoption doesn't exist, obviously. Remus Lupin who had legally been Remus Potter for two years by then, only using Remus Lupin to spite his parents, cleared the rumor up very quickly with a simple tweet from his Percy Jackson stan account (again how was he not expecting James to call him a nerd) that read:
"Lol I'm Remus Lupin-Potter. I'm not a Potter biologically because Euphemia DID NOT cheat, but I am legally because they adopted me. Hope this clears some shit up."
James is enough of a narcissist that he lets Remus read him the funny articles. Given the choice, he'd rather read one of the hundreds of pieces of fanfiction that glorify him on the internet. The ones that make him seem like a god physically and someone that could charm their way out of anything, but Remus refuses to read them aloud to him, no matter how much he tries to bribe him.
"Do Us Weekly." James suggests.
Remus digs it out of the pile and shows James the cover. "I'll never get used to being on the cover of things." The magazine has a photo of the two from the last weekend. Remus' is wearing a sweater with straight-leg jeans and James is wearing dress pants and a sky-blue polo. They look like absolute losers, but the photo has been edited to emphasize Remus' smile and eyes as well as James' jawline and curly dark hair. Below it in bold orange letters, the headline states First Siblings' Wild Night in NYC.
"Oh yeah, two keynote speakers. Nothing crazier than shrimp cocktails and a speech about carbon emissions." James says.
"It says here you had some kind of rendezvous with a 'mystery ginger',"
Remus coughs before reading. "'While First Son Remus Lupin-Potter was leaving in a dark car to a star-studded party shortly after the gala, twenty-one-year-old heartthrob, James Potter was seen sneaking into the W hotel to meet a mystery redhead in the presidential suite and leaving around four a.m."
"Shut up. They did not say I was a heartthrob, you're making that up." James splitters.
"No, I'm not, they say it right here." Remus points to the line in the article, it does say 'heartthrob'. Remus continues reading before James can respond. "' Sources inside the hotel reported hearing amorous noises from the room all night, and rumors are swirling the redhead was none other than...Lily Evans, the twenty-one-year-old granddaughter of Vice President Mike Evans and the third member of the White House Trio. Could it be the two are rekindling their romance?'"
"Yes!" James shouts, and Remus groans. "That's less than a month! You owe me twenty bucks, baby!"
"Was it actually Lily?"
James thinks back to that night, showing up in Lily's room with a bottle of her favorite whiskey. Their 'relationship' on the campaign trail was short, much to James' reluctance. Although James genuinely cared for her, they were both seventeen-year-olds who didn't know anything. Both of them thought they were the smartest person in any room. James has since gotten his ego in check and conceded that Lily is 100% smarter than him and way too smart to have ever dated him.
It's not particularly his fault that the press won't let it go, everyone is convinced that they're soulmates, but Lily and James don't help dampen the past fire. If they occasionally get drunk in hotel rooms together watching The Crown and making loud moaning noises for the benefit of nosy tabloids, he can't be blamed really, it's fun. They have simply found a way to turn an undesirable situation into their own personal entertainment.
"Maybe." James says, dragging out the vowels.
"That's cheating, you dick!" Remus says as he swats James with the magazine.
“A bets-a-bet." James shrugs his shoulders. "We said if there was a new rumor in a month, you'd owe me twenty bucks. And look there's a new rumor. My Cashapp is rizzard101."
Remus glares at him. "I hope you know I'm not paying you. God, I am going to kill Lily when we see her tomorrow. What're you wearing, by the way?"
James looks at him confused. "For what?"
"The wedding?"
"Uhhh...whose wedding?"
Remus' eyes widen. "Um, the royal wedding. In France? It's literally on every magazine cover everywhere." He holds up Us Weekly, and this time James sees the main headline: PRINCE EVAN SAYS I DO! Along with a photo of Evan Rosier and his fiancée smiling blandly.
James drops the powdered sugar donut onto his blue comforter. "That's this weekend?"
"James, we leave tomorrow morning. We have two appearances before we even get to the ceremony! God! I can't believe McGonagal hasn't been on your ass about this already!"
"Shit. I had it written down, I swear, I just got side tracked."
"With what? Conspiring with my best friend against me for twenty dollars?"
"No, shit-head, with my research paper," James dramatically points to the pile of papers on his nightstand. "I've been working on it all week for Roman Political Thought. And I thought we agreed that Lily was our best friend."
"A) That can not possibly be a real class you're taking. B) Peter likes you more than he does me, which means that automatically he is your best friend and Lily is mine."
"I really wish they'd stop calling us the White House Trio, it makes me feel bad for excluding Pete." James says.
"It's not really your fault James, and we aren't excluding him. Pete lives in California. Kinda hard to just go hang out with him when he's all the way across the country." Remus replies. The two brothers sat in silence for a minute, before Remus spoke again. "Is it in anyway possible that you forgot about the biggest international public event of this year because you don't want to see your rival?"
"Remus. I am one of the sons of the President of the United States of America. Prince Regulus is a figurehead of the British Empire. You cannot just go around calling him my 'rival'." James takes a bite out of his donut. "Besides, calling him my 'rival' implies that I actually give two shits about what he's doing, and that he's not just a stuck-up product of incest that probably gets off to photos of himself who hates me for no reason."
Remus grimaces, "Oof."
James shrugs. "Just saying."
"Well you don't have to actually like him. Just fake a smile and not cause an international conflict at his best friend's wedding. You do know what you're wearing right?"
"Yes, Rem. I picked it out and Minnie approved it last month."
"Good." Remus says as he walks away.
"Okay. Bye!" James calls after him. The vinyl on the record play had spun into fuzzy silence. He rolls off of his bed and grabs a new one. He sets off typing to the beginning sounds of "London Luck, & Love".