I didn't ever expect to understand him. Or to even begin such a daunting idea.
I had only hoped to glean a small amount of insight into the workings of his mind; it was all I asked, it was all I wanted from him.
I'd craved more before, when I was younger. I had craved foolish things, such things that I now realise were inconceivable in such an atmosphere.
I had craved someone to always aspire to, someone I could always turn to in my times of need—not that, as a child, these were times I thought I would find.
He was my protector, my idol, and my best friend. Only he was there when Father yelled and cursed everything in sight. Only he was there when Mother's fury shook the gates of hell.
He was there when Bella played games with me that were hardly childish in nature. Or when Cissy cried and cried that I had insulted her to our Uncle.
He was there while I licked my wounds and sobbed.
He was there while we both hid in the cupboard, praying that Kreacher would have a moment of kindness and not reveal our location to the blundering, irate, and drunken man I called my father.
I always thought he would be with me for he had promised me nothing less, and as a needy seven year-old, I was ready and willing to accept these promises as cold, hard facts.
When Bella left for Hogwarts, we celebrated silently in the run beside our house where the grass was brown and unkempt. We toasted our unbreakable glasses of Pumpkin Juice to a quieter and less terror-filled year than the others.
We didn't count on Cissy turning into enemy number one and keeping tabs on us, but such things did not matter. Andy kept her eyes open for us, peering out from behind her books.
He understood that at exactly seven o'clock our father would enter the kitchen and we were to be standing there, backs straight and waiting on our mother's report. We always reminded the other and caught the un-tucked shirt-tails before it was too late.
He understood that while he had a pathological need to laugh and smile, that I preferred the quiet and the solitude of my thoughts.
He knew that when Mother snuffed out the candles in my room, until I was ten years old, that I would cry and cry until he found a light for me.
I relished curling up beside him in his bed when the storm raged outside and the curses never ceased downstairs. Our hot breaths on each other's necks and the protective arms around our shoulders were the only comfort we'd ever received; and it was these that I craved on the lonely nights when he left for Hogwarts.
I understood that he couldn't sit still through a whole day of Mother's etiquette and school lessons. I knew when to cause the necessary, but careful, distraction to allow him those scarce minutes of freedom.
And he was always fighting at my side when Father banished me to his study for discipline. I was rarely alone in there. I don't know what I would have done if I had been.
I was never and will never be as strong as him.
I was the first person at home he-himself told about his Sorting. The letter he sent our parents never reached my hands, but he managed to find a Floo.
He said he was only sorry that it would cause me pain at home. He said he'd never apologise for being there though. I didn't expect him to.
I remember him that summer, asking me every day to not follow the rest. Telling me it could be like it had always been with us; I just had to ask for Gryffindor.
I sat with him on the train two years later. It was only for ten minutes; then Cissy and Potter walked in at the same time, each of them demanding us. Separately of course.
I wish he'd asked me to come with him.
It was boring, sitting on the train alone for all intents and purposes. I didn't want to listen to gossip and politics, and they saw no reason to try and include me.
It was worse knowing that he was laughing his arse off in a compartment just a few down from mine. It was torture knowing that he would have let me stay if I'd asked.
I wish I had his courage.
I used to sit and wonder what would have happened if I'd had a shred of defiance in my tiny skull. I stopped wondering after a while—only to keep my sanity.
I thought it would be easy to ask for Gryffindor, I pictured him sitting there. I couldn't do it.
I have never forgotten the disappointment on his face; I will always remember that he turned away first. He turned to his friends and I was forced to turn to our family.
It was never the same.
But Merlin I wish it could have kept that childhood innocence. I wish I had never lost my brother.
Why didn't we speak up?