Harry Potter was the hottest rookie on the circuit, he was the golden boy, reckless, arrogant, fast.
He was speed, as he himself would put it.
The media loved him. He was drama. He was confidence. He was performative.
Gold-painted streaks across his NASCAR sports car matched not only the flash of his arrogant, sharp, a little too pretty for a man’s grin, but the adorned scar in his forehead. Fans screamed his name like a chant. He ate it all up like it was fuel.
He knows from the start he’s gonna win. So he But his ego? His ego is just so much like his dad’s, some would say. His ego, because of course it had to be caused by something other than his hands, shot a chaotic blow at the qualifiers.
His ego had told him he was there to eat everyone up.
He might’ve given himself too much credit.
A blown tire. A blown temper. A blown race. And one, pay attention, only one single spinout during the qualifiers, and suddenly Harry Potter, the prodigy golden boy was a PR nightmare with too much news hungry press and not enough humility. His manager sent him away to “cool off” and to “get his mind in the right track, kid,” which really just meant: disappear until people forget you almost killed three drivers on one curve because you refused to change a tire.
So there he was, driving alongside his team because he refused to even drive in the same truck as his manager. He had even threatened his team to come out to Rita Skeeter and lie about whatever issue his sponsors might be facing unless they gave him his car back.
So instead of laying low, he forces his team to give him his car back and, of course, he gets lost. He made a wrong turn once or twice, but he is definitely not back in his city, instead, he is in the middle of nowhere.
In the middle of a dusty desert and, closer than he had expected, a giant billboard that said “Hog Springs” with tiny little letters that said “come see our warts!” Harry, without care, speed in through, ignoring most if not all speed signaling, finding an empty parking lot where he was able to do one too few donuts to release pent up frustration. He slept in his car that night.
When he woke up though, he finally managed to see the little town. A town with broken roads that were definitely not caused by him, many old men with tired eyes who look at him with anger instead of exhaustion,