Highest of highs
The thing is he didn’t know what to do anymore.
Which for him was funny, he always knew what to do.
He had many thoughts, ideas, feelings about everything and everyone, so many in fact that it would keep him up at night, tossing and turning.
The thing is he was so tired.
Not tired that you can remedy with a good night's sleep. No.
This tiredness ran deep, it can from the deepest part of his soul.
Currently he was around a group of people, and yet he had never felt so alone in his life.
The funny thing is you really couldn’t tell the moral dilemma that was playing in his mind.
In a sick way he praised himself for hiding it, of course he couldn’t explain what he was hiding and really didn’t know himself.
What was this within him?
This monster inside him that made him lie and manipulate the people he loved most into thinking that he was the good old James Fleamont Potter.
It had to stop.
Everything had to.
What he would do not feel this tiredness.
It used to not occupy his mind all the time, and sometimes he can still push those feelings and sometimes thoughts so deep he would almost forget about them for a while.
It’s just become harder and harder not to feel anymore.
James went through phases where all he wanted to do was be alone and just not feel.
Sure, he still doesn't want to feel it all so strongly, but he found that being alone makes it worse, so much worse.
He needs distractions, and he found he couldn't distract himself well enough.
He needs people, many people.
He needs them to be loud, and him to be loud as well, so loud that together they might fight to calm the roars of his inner voice led by his racing mind.
People.
It’s interesting, isn’t it?
How he spends so much of his time, hiding parts of himself or overcompensating by being the loudest in the room to hide the fact that he was deeply insecure.
His internal monologue has him in a choke hold, do this, say this, look like this.
And why?
To impress people, to make them like him.
And why?
Because the thought of being alone, truly alone.
That scares him so deeply, the best way he can describe the feeling is that, there would simply be a world without any light.
And everyone knows there cannot be a world without.
The funny thing is that the sun used to stand alone, without it's solar system.
Looking at James now, you could never tell, you really couldn't.
James knows.
He knows how it feels to be alone, to in a group feel always out of place, to not feel loved, to feel like people would not notice if you were there, to feel like people wished you weren’t there.
He knows.
He knows that he never ever wants to let a living soul feel what he felt those years ago, and sometimes still feels today.
People don’t deserve that, they really don’t.
That is why James makes the people around him know he loves and appreciates them.
That is why James never ever lets go of hugs first, because you never know how much the other person may need it.
That is why James smiles and laughs when he feels his soul screaming, he wants to make everyone else happy.
He had it all under control, kinda.
Now he finds himself staring at a bottle of firewhisky that’s sitting so comfortably on the table in the Gryffindor common room.
He never used to drink, he didn’t want to impair his Quidditch physique.
James loves Quidditch wholeheartedly.
It was never really an option, thus never a problem.
Quidditch was still everything to James, but he found he could still perform and have fun once in a while.
He now finds himself continuing to stare at his bottle.
This bottle has the power to quieten his ever present thoughts, to make him forget for just a while the pressure, sadness and anger he felt all the time.
It has the power to make him entirely free.
It has the power to make the sun shine just that much brighter.
If it could do all that, the downsides shouldn’t matter, right?
It’s for the greater good, he thought morbidly.
You let me fly to the highest of highs, the highest I have ever known.