#desi james potter headcanons

[loserboyfriendrjl]

headcanon that james swore that he's never going to die during a holiday. back on the 31st of october, he was celebrating diwali, a holiday that brought him close to his natal lands, to his blood family, for the first time with his wife, the woman he'd love forever, and his newborn son, hari, the boy he loved like the light of his eyes

[spiritstar477]

Sirius Black is white as fuck. He’s pale. He might as well be translucent. He borderline glows in the dark. He spends more than five minutes in the sun without UV protection he’s turning a lovely shade of pink. James (who’s desi) and Remus (who might be welsh but has to explain to people that he is in fact white) scream when Sirius walks into a dark room claiming they saw a ghost and tell him to turn of the light at bedtime because they can still see him in the dark and and

[shipspainfulships]

Literally James Potter.

{Actor: Abhay Verma}

[moonage-daydreamy]

'kay hear me out:

james would be an airpods guy - because his adhd ass cannot deal with the wires and their mess. needs his music without any interruptions. nevertheless has lost countless pairs or ones while flying with regulus. it became a thing with them for who could find more with reg being a seeker and all.

sirius would be a wired earphones bluethooth guy (the ones that have a neck thingy) because otherwise he would keep losing them. he couldn't deal with wired ones because they would keep getting them tangled and would lose his mind untangling them. he liked the idea of being tethered but not bound.

regulus would be a headphones guy - because blocking the world out and all that. has the best noise cancelation headphones out there that he religious charges each night to ensure he doesn't have to tolerate idiots; unless it's his idiot (he'll only take down his headphones for james).

remus would be a wired headphones guy because he would always forget to charge them. plus untangling them would give him an out to direct his frustration before moony nights. but trust me they are barely hanging on for dear life. one of the buds got chewed out by padfoot and the wire is like exposed at least three different points. remus likes to think if it works it w o r k s despite sirius begging him to get new ones.

[futurequibblerjournalist]

I think it’s such a missed opportunity that more people in fics/general headcanons don’t make James more into Potions. His father made a fortune with his skills in Potion making and the Potter line is notoriously skilled with Potions. I just,, I need good at Potions/Potions lover James

[study-of-the-moon]

remus "borderline anger issues" lupin and sirius "will scratch eyes out to prove a point" black arguing in the common room:

peter sitting in the corner, horrified: they need an exorcism. DESPERATELY.

[marauderstars]

James didn’t have many friends as a child because he didn’t speak English until he was eight and his parents were worried he wouldn’t fit in at Muggle primary school OR in the pure blood social scene. James and Peter met when Peter’s father started working for Fleamont a few years before they started at Hogwarts. Peter taught James all the English swear words and James taught Peter all the Hindi ones. Part of the reason James never suspected Peter is that they were both each other’s first friendship.

[resident-gay-bitch]

Help me! Indians and/or James Potter lovers help me out!!

im a big fan of Desi James and i'm writing a fic at the moment and i want to include affectionate language (pet names) from all of my characters national languages and have been digging for some Hindi terms of endearment for a while and am a little lost.

a lot of the searches are coming up with words but not specifying which Indian language it derives from, and I just don't want to like mix languages and be stupid and inconsiderate about it.

anyway, so far i have "Jaan" or "Meri Jaan" which I understand means "life" or "my life" wich is fucking adorable, as well as "Mera Pyaar" (I've seen a couple of different spelling variations of this so please correct me if it's wrong) which i understand means "my love".

both are very very sweet, and i will be using them! however, i've been looking for terms more like "sweetheart", "pretty", "cutie", "handsome", "baby", and stuff like that. you know, terms that can be used a bit more casually, in the earlier stages of dating / sleeping together, before the love and devotion happens!

anyway, any help would be very appreciated. any terms of endearment you know, any extra information you can give me, anything at all that relates to Desi James that would be helpful for me to know is so appreciated!

also any headcannons you have about Desi James would be awesome! especially ones that like involve his culture and stuff like that. id really like to write him well and give authenticity to his character that i don't naturally just have. i am doing my research where i need too, of course, but if you have little things about him that i could simply just adopt or learn about would be so awesome because like, i wouldn't even know to search for a lot of little things i bet.

anyway, thank you!!! i'll love anyone that helps me out so so so so so so much!!

edit: if he were to say "star" or "starlight" or "starshine" or "pretty star" something about stars to someone as a term of endearment (or just affectionately) how would that be said / spelt? i hopped on google but there are so many translations and i don't know which would be correct in this context and im helpless! thank youuuuuuuuuuuu <3

[siriusblack-the-third]

Hey I absolutely adore your Indian James headcanons can you do some for Harry too please <33

Okay this got too long so it's only Harry's first year at Hogwarts. At some point I might do the rest of his years but yeah. Here you go, i hope you like it :)

The first time Harry noticed his skin was darker than the people on Privet Drive was when he was four. The first time he noticed people sneered at him for it was when he was five and a half. He didn't understand it; why did they think the colour of his skin meant that he was inferior to them? He heard the words chee-chee and brownie thrown around like Dudley threw his food, and quietly pulled his shirt tighter around himself.

When Harry is eight, Dudley and his gang throw him in a ditch and throw dirt and soil on him till he's coughing and tears are running down his face. "You blend right into the mud," Piers laughs at him. The next day, the boy turns up to school with black skin. Harry sits in the corner and turns his face away, a secret grin playing on his lips.

He comes to Hogwarts, and there are so many colours. He is approached by Parvati on the second night, and she asks him if he's excited for Ganpati Chaturthi. He stares at her, and then says, "I'm sorry, but I don't know what that is." She gets offended, but they haltingly talk it out, awkward and stilted like most eleven year olds. When she realises that he's been kept from his heritage and his magic, she flies off the rails with anger. "That's it," she says, "we're friends now. No arguments."

Harry loves talking to Parvati. She's the one that tells him his father was from India. She's the one that tells him the names of his grandparents, that tells him of the importance of heritage in the magical world. They talk about religion and food and all sorts of things, and within two weeks Harry is asking her to teach him Marathi. It's hard at first; the grammar structure is more like French than English, the alphabet sequence is weird and complicated and has too many letters, but he keeps practising his svar and vyanjana and kana and matra. He will do this, he tells himself. (He doesn't tell Ron. He wants this for himself, he thinks. His family, his heritage. He wants to learn before he shares, and so he doesn't tell Ron. For now. He will, when he knows enough.)

Slowly, he starts talking to other Indian kids at Hogwarts. Padma, a seventh year Slytherin named Aarzoo who's Muslim and always has the prettiest hijabs, Gryffindor Kalyani from fourth year and Hufflepuff Rushabh from the third. Kalyani is from Maharashtra just like the Patil twins and Harry, Rushabh is from Gujarat and Aarzoo from Punjab. Harry finds it fascinating that India has so many different cultures and religions, and demands knowledge from them. Aarzoo laughs, and tells him he should have been with the 'Claws.

Harry disagrees. He was supposed to be in Slytherin, he knows, but he is in Gryffindor, where his family had been. His family had been Indian. He wants to know everything about it. If he couldn't have his parents, he would have that which had been a major part of his father's life. And so he reads and observes and studies and asks questions— hesitating at first in case they yell at him (Aunt Petunia hated questions and he feared these people would be the same), but slowly he asks more and more. He talks for hours with Kalyani and Rushabh, and they tell him about Garba and Dhol Tasha, Ganpati Chaturthi and Diwali, Eid and Gudi Padwa. They talk about the languages of India, and Harry immediately asks Aarzoo to teach him Urdu and Hindi. She laughs, and says he should focus on Marathi first. He pouts, but nods.

The Mirror of Erised shows him his father, and he can't take his eyes off. James Potter is a tall man, bulky frame covered in muscles and warm brown skin that seems to glow with happiness. His eyes are light brown, and the bold black lines drawn under them make the green specks stand out. He's dressed in what Harry knows is called a kurta, white and gold threads woven to form images of peacocks and elephants and other intricate designs. The next day, Harry asks Padma what she lines her eyes with, and she promptly hands him a little round metal box and a tiny wooden stick. "It's called kajal." She tells him the differences in pronunciation between Hindi and Marathi, and shows him how to apply it. Harry wears it everyday. It makes his eyes look bright, brighter than they already are, and he falls in love with it. Kalyani presses a kajal covered finger behind his ear every morning. "For good luck," she tells him, a grin playing on her pretty lips. Harry flushes, and smiles back shyly.

For Christmas, Aarzoo gives him perfume. It's chandan and mogra with hints of rose, she says, "and your grandfather made it. His name was Fleamont Henry Potter, and he was an exceptionally talented potioneer." Harry wears it religiously. Padma and Parvati band together and get him books on the Potter family and their historical importance, and he almost cries. Rushabh promises to teach him how to play Garba, and Kalyani gives him a cookbook for everyday Indian foods— breakfast and lunch and a few fancy stuff. Harry hugs it to his chest and thanks her with shining eyes. (he may have a bit of a crush on her. He can't help it— she's really smart, and she's pretty.)

Throughout the year, all of them work to introduce him to Indian food. At first, he thinks it will be easy. It is not. There is no such cuisine named Indian, Parvati tells him sternly. There is Punjabi, South Indian, Mughlai, Maharashtrian, North Indian, Bihari, Bengali and so many more. "The food in India changes with every twenty kilometres of travel," Aarzoo says when he mock complains about it. "It's never the same, and that's what makes it so special." He agrees.

The end of the year arrives, and Harry is still weak from his tryst down the trapdoor. When Ron and Hermione aren't present, his friends from home (because that's what India is, isn't it? His home. The home he never got to see, but is no less a part of him.) crowd around his hospital bed and have long talks with him, filled with banter and laughter. His Marathi is so much better now than it was in September, and he blushes when Kalyani compliments him on it. Rushabh winks at him, and Harry throws a pillow at him, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks at being caught out.

On the last day of school, he hugs Aarzoo around the waist and cries into her stomach. It's the first time he calls her "Aarzoo Tai", and she smiles widely, her own eyes dripping tears. "You will write," she says sternly, "okay? This might be the end of my Hogwarts years, but you are my little brother." He cries harder and nods, refuses to let go until the very last minute.

Harry goes back to Privet Drive with a heavy heart and a proud smile. He isn't inferior to the people there, he knows. He's special. He's Indian. He's James Potter's son, and he's going to live up to it.

[padfootsaphrodite]

Is it just me? Every time I see a drawing of James Potter and he’s white I get a little confused. Like in my mind he isn’t white but it isn’t like that for everyone else.

[moonsvillain]

— various unsorted [desi] james potter headcanons

at least once a day when he’s back home on school break, he makes his mother and him chai to share with biscuits while they discuss catch up with each other.

absolutely loves writing letters. james spends hours penning them out to send to his friends, family, just about anyone he’s close with.

carries around a digital camera because he saw his father’s collection of photo albums and flipped through them one afternoon, becoming determined to keep up his own collection. has one photo album dedicated solely to the marauders.

james is fiercely protective over his friends and the younger gryffindor students. he has a pretty laid back demeanour but snaps to the defensive for the people he cares about when he sees they’re in trouble.

he’s something of a mother-hen. the marauders, who get the brunt of this, get exasperated by his fussing but he’s steady in his insistence on making sure they’re alright, well-fed and watered. ends up freaking out when they get sick because of this, much to their amusement.

he’s a bit of a neat freak. one thing his father drilled into his mind was having a proper morning hygiene routine and can’t stand how dirty the bathroom and dorms get with four teenage boys sharing the space, so he’s always deep cleaning at least once a month. imagine sisyphus with a mop.

very touchy. his friends’ personal space is his personal space. his love language is physical affection and he’s someone who’s very dependent on it. will idly hold someone’s hand while rambling on about nothing, slumped under an oak tree by hogwarts’ lake.

a very competitive quidditch player. he likes to pretend that everything comes easy to him out of some weird sense of pride or his belief that he’ll be cooler if he holds onto a facade of nonchalance but on a particularly manic day he could rival oliver wood’s special brand of obsessive enthusiasm when it comes to a quidditch match.

james and sirius “dated” for one week in their first year because they both wanted practice at a relationship so they wouldn’t fuck up if they got into a real one. they broke up because james spelled sirius’ knees into being unable to bend and laughed at how stupid his gait looked on his way to the hospital wing because he didn’t remember the counter-jinx.

there are a few words that james says completely wrong because he never actually heard them growing up—just read them and guessed how they were pronounced without going through the effort to figure it out—and up until he’s in his twenties, he’s still discovering bits and pieces of his vocabulary that he’s been pronouncing wrong for his entire life without knowing.

james didn’t learn to speak english until he was six but now he speaks it better than he does his mother tongue. every few summers he tells himself he’ll learn urdu properly, and every few summers, he forgets about this resolution entirely.

his relatives from back home had a collection of dvds that fleamont liked to watch for nostalgia’s sake, and as a result, james grew up watching them as well. by the time he gets to hogwarts, his mind is filled with bollywood classics, earworms in the form of love songs in hindi that twirl through his brain while he floats through detentions, and romantic gestures that seem just fantastical enough for him to try them on the first beauty he saw (read: lily evans) when he first stepped foot in hogwarts.

when sirius runs away from home for good and ends up at james’ place, they spend the first three weeks immediately afterwards sleeping in the same bed, james hugging him through nightmares while sirius clung onto him for dear life. something in their friendship changed for good that night, and james thought sirius became a brother to him at that moment.

[causereyna-artie]

Regulus would be the sort of person to nod and hum while you tell him a story, Sirius would be the sort to bitch about the villain in it and gasp an necessary unnecessary amount, while James would do both, promise to not tell anyone and then with his goldfish memory forget it in a day. Buuutttt if he did remember it he would tell Effie. Fight the wall.

[vomits0cutely]

“Letter to my 13 year old self”

But it’s actually James Potter.

[strwbi-laces]

Even more hcs for Desi James Potter

Effie taught him how to braid hair with jasmine flowers and that became his go to comfort cue

so when he's stressed he'll go sit behind lily or sirius and braid their hair

Side note: if anyone wants to draw reg or lily or literally anyone with jasmine flowers in their hair i will love u foreverrr

Watched a lot of bollywood movies (mainly romances) when he was a kid, to the point where he can quote some movies word for word. 

Every diwali he spent at hogwarts he’d charm a candle to not go out and leave it in the common room overnight

On holi he dyes his hair rainbow and uses a spell to make it fluorescent. His head looks like a lightbulb for a day and he loves it

Dealt with a couple of micro aggressions at hogwarts like teachers repeatedly mixing him up with the only other brown kid in his year (the kid didn’t look remotely like him if anyone bothered to look past their skin).

This just made him more bold, determined to make the teachers know who he was and recognise his face.

This is part 2! The first part can be found here.

If anyone wants to talk about their own head cannons or how to portray these feel free to dm or send me an ask!!

[evansisasadist]

James collects panini football cards

[chandaurtaare]

Continuing the series of desi hp hc’s forward

The malfoy’s are Konkani solely cause the house of black is Konkani therefore narcissa is Konkani and they'd definitely want a ’pure’ marriage.

Most people who work in the ministry of magic are gujju, So the Weasleys are also gujju but they aren't allat rich. (molly’s family would be gujju to)

Hermione’s family is from the pahadi areas, garhwali as i was thinking.

Harry would be half punjabi from james’s side and half malyali from lily’s side.

But i think the Dursley's would be the average Punjabi family from the north.

The longbottoms would be from UP(awadh area idk why)

I think most of the death eating ppl atleast would be from the west coast. Obviously pettigrew would be an exception but he's also the only griffyndor death eater so-

The Diggory’s are also punjabi but like from chandigarh and not like delhi punjabi like the Dursley's.

More later ig lol toodles for now yall

MORE Desi hp hc’s

(check the reblogs of the first link for more to!)