Jily oneshots

Keeps Me on My Toes

by lovesickjily

When James Potter said he wanted to drive, he didn't mean it like this.

He'd gotten a car at 15, despite not having a license, simply because his mother wanted him to falsely believe that he had power at such a young age, to show off to all his peers that he was superior in the sense that he had a car and they didn't. The drawback that he didn't know at that time was that he wasn't getting a license any time soon, nor was anyone going to even show him the basics of driving. Euphemia Potter knew how to keep her son level-handed as much as she possibly could.

What was the point in getting a car, even if it was any car he chose, if he couldn't even drive it? That was the point of a car, to take one to the destination that they wanted. It was like holding a piece of meat in front of a dog and pulling it away as soon as they got close enough to nearly taste it. James would have even rathered to get a dingy little car, whose previous owner would have called it something ugly, like Bertha— no offence to anyone walking around the earth with such a name—, so long as he got to drive around in it as much as he wished.

Maybe it was the spoiled little kid in him that was forcing him to have such a mindset, but he liked to think that it was his inner teenage rebel, who had dreams of freedom and the occasional thoughts of the sweet release of death. This was the 21st century after all, where jokes about death were commonplace.

And now, three years later, when he'd finally gotten his license, he'd expected to go on four annual road trips with his best mates and take them around the country because he could at last drive, but in reality? The only times he'd been allowed to take his car, which had not yet been named because he hadn't found any inspiration yet, were for trips to the grocery store, running errands for his parents, and, now, as of late, taking his little sister to her dance classes because their parents had a business meeting to attend to out of the country.

Really, he was stoked to finally be able to take his sweet Bentley out for fresh air, after having rotted inside of his garage for nearly three years, but he couldn't help but admit his disappointment for the entire ordeal. It was like being excited for a ride on a roller coaster, except the roller coaster didn't drop as high as he'd thought it would, and the higher it dropped, the better.

Amelia, his sister, had expressed a desire for dancing when she was younger, probably since James had been her current age, and their mother would not let a passion like that get tossed in the bin. James knew that all too well, having taken crochet classes when he was younger because he'd stumbled upon her doing it one day, and who knew how interesting it was to arrange threads in such a manner that they'd create an entire item of their own? He still had a scarf that he'd knitted hanging somewhere in his room because he'd been so proud of it.

He loved his little sister with all of his heart, really, he did, but if his plan that he'd concocted went accordingly, then he'd be able to finally put his sweet car to proper use, instead of just as the ticket to the grocery store, because eventually, the sight of the watermelons set up on display got sickening after twenty visits.

On the very first day, the first of many he believed to be the ticket to freedom, even if just for three hours, he'd been weighed down with the accumulating pressures of school, only ever increasing by the days as the school year nearly came to an end. It wasn't exactly the actual schoolwork, per say, because he was top of the class, but the amount of it. It probably would have been smart of him to instead do his work, but where was the fun in that? Sleep was for the weak, and Euphemia Potter did not raise him to be weak.

Nope, not at all.

Physical strength? He had loads of that. Emotional strength? He could easily bounce back from a horrible situation.