AN: As always, not mine.
Becoming Me
My brother was the heir, and he had the charisma and the looks and the determination to be the next head of the family. My job was to be loyal, to lend support and work out all the boring stuff in the background. And insurance, in case something went wrong. That's how my parents had planned it until that Christmas holiday in 1993, and of course then something went wrong, and I became insurance, and the replacement, and I tried real hard at the charisma and the determination. Couldn't do much about my looks though.
I wasn't terribly successful at it in any case – it's sort of hard to pretend you like the attention if you're the kind of person who generally sits in a corner not being noticed. Maybe exchanging a few sentences with Nott. Father sighed a lot during that time and finally set his hopes on future grandsons, I think. (Mother started to invite suitable girls soon after I turned sixteen, which pretty much confirmed that theory.) And while I tried so hard to be like my brother I somehow forgot what he was really like.
It's strange how memory works, isn't it? I remembered how he let me sneak out with him one evening in summer, when we went to the village and we watched a garden party and we grabbed a chain of blinking lights from the fence that would never work again after we took it home, not even with magic. I remembered how he would talk to a group of his friends and keep arguing and making jokes and counter everything they came up with until they agreed with him, or nearly. I remembered the collection of magazines and strange money and sweets he kept hidden in his room and how proud I felt that he trusted me. And I remembered him the way my parents did – convincing and successful and laughing. It took me years, even after Potter killed the Dark Lord, to remember the rest.
In the meantime I started working in my fathers office – I've always been good at Runes, Arithmancy and History. You have to pay attention to all the little details and that's what's important in contract law too. The Goblins have crazily complex contracts – every clause in thirty or so scrolls has to be checked, and the words might have different meanings depending on the time it was written and the status of the Goblin that signed it. My father handled the stuff with clients, the meetings and the socializing and so on, while I concentrated on the contracts. You know, the lending support and working on the details in the background part.
Over the years we got more and more work related to Muggle laws and contracts – the wizarding society opened up, and Muggleborns introduced more of their culture and it became quite fashionable, at least in some parts of our world, to "do things the Muggle way". Father resisted anything Muggle, of course, and with our clients mostly from the old and traditional families we could pretend for a while that it wasn't happening, not in our firm. But last summer I had to put my foot down – we were losing business to other lawyers without such inhibitions, the Montagues were thinking about buying from a Muggle supplier and even Father realised that we couldn't risk to lose one of our wealthiest clients so he didn't fight me very hard. And just like that I went to a workshop at the Ministry about Muggle customs and their legal system.
The stuff I learned was interesting – I was surprised that some Muggle rulings are nearly as old and as arcane as our own, and some of their newer ideas sound fascinating – but that wasn't the most important thing about the workshop. You see, everyone who hadn't taken Muggle Studies at Hogwarts was expected to go on a day trip to visit a museum, and a court trial, and an office where Muggles worked. And there, at the office, while we waited to get visitors badges ("Andorran Business and Trade Exchange" it said, though they must have used a few heavy Confundus charms to make that work) and for the manager to show us around I glanced at some of the magazines on a small table.
In an instant I was back, at twelve, watching my brother show me the magazines under the loose floor board – cars and machines and people wearing ridiculous clothes, and everything was not moving! And I remembered why he treasured them so (well, apart from the one with the naked women) – they were forbidden and Muggle and everything we couldn't be. I walked through the office building after my colleagues from the workshop and heard my brother from fifteen years ago, claiming that he'd fly an aeroplane one day, and be an engine builder, and he'd show them, he'd show everyone that he could be whatever he wanted to be.
When we left the building I slipped one of the magazines in my briefcase. I put it in my desk and over the next few weeks I'd take a break between working on my contracts to study it, the pictures of shiny new cars and the test of tyres and the column about driving safely with a dog in your car. Then I started buying other Muggle magazines on my way to work, keeping them hidden from my parents and feeling like twelve again.
One day I went and opened my brothers cache under the floor. They were still there, all his dreams and secrets, and something else too, thrown on top of the rest. Maybe it was left for me, an explanation of sorts, a lure perhaps, or maybe it was just stuffed in there in anger and haste and forgotten. I took out the meticulously filled in application forms for Muggle university for Oliver Phineas Cole, signed 27th December 1993. Missing was the Signature of Parent of Minor Student, and it had been ripped so violently by a cutting charm that all attempts to mend it must have failed.
Christmas 1993 was like every other Christmas before had been and would never again be after that year. Strict Aunt Erica was there for Boxing Day, disapproving of presents and children in general, and our younger cousins from Father's side with permanently drunk Uncle Albert and bashful Aunt Flora, and we put up stockings and had crackers and pudding and a bit of the eggnog. It snowed the whole time, big snow drifts in the garden, perfect for building snowmen, and heavy snow flakes coating everything anew during the night.
My brother was on his best behaviour during the holiday and tenser than I have ever seen him, but that might just be my imagination now. He waited three days, until the relatives were back home, until I was up in my room playing with the new wireless I'd got, until Father was in the library enjoying his Firewhisky and full of Christmas cheer. He went in nervous, I imagine, afraid of Father's reaction but also drunk with his own daring, always ready to argue, to try and convince, to finally be who he dreamed to be. I sneaked downstairs when I heard the shouting, the angry bellow of my father, the defiant yelling of my brother, but Mother saw me in the hall and sent me back up.
I didn't hear what the argument was about, and I didn't see my brother again. He went out to visit a friend they said to me later. The family had thought he wanted to stay the night there they told those who offered condolences. Nobody mentioned the argument.
It took days to find him, splinched and buried under snow. No clear destination in mind, too emotional for the determination and deliberation required said the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad. Happens quite often with teenagers who just got their license, Sir, mostly not with such tragic consequences.
I didn't look under his floor board, not in the fifteen years that followed, and so I didn't notice the one thing that was missing. It only came to me recently: there was no strange money left, none of the paper bills my brother had so painstakingly collected by changing whatever pocket money he could. I've wondered since then. Did he really intend to leave, half a year before finishing Hogwarts, because of one ugly row with Father, without saying a word of goodbye to me? Did he plan to live on a couple years worth pocket money? Did he know what an engineer actually does? Was he just angry and desperate and alone?
Whatever his reasons and whatever his plans were my brother had the determination and the daring to try for them. And I'll have another go at being like him.
We've celebrated Christmas like we did for the last fifteen years, silent and sober and remembering. Aunt Erica has just left for home, looking frail and old, Aunt Flora always firecalls for Christmas greetings but there isn't much to talk. My father sits in the library now, drinking, and soon I'll go down there. I'll tell him that I'm going to move into a flat of my own in a Muggle city, and I'm going to take up some courses in History and Law at a Muggle university, and I'll open up my own office if he doesn't want me working with him any longer. I've prepared that – if I go I'll take a lot of our clients with me, enough for me to make a living. That's what I do – work out the details, pay attention to the boring stuff in the background. That's who I am, and I'm going to be whatever I want to be.
I don't think Father will be too surprised. I doubt he'll even protest that much. He'll remember his first son, too, and my brother will convince him, from fifteen years ago, like he always could convince anyone, laughing and determined and arguing even from the grave.