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beginnings
You don’t feel like the older sibling, but she doesn’t act like the younger one either. Not yet, at least.
You’re just two kids living in tandem with penchants for getting dirt under your fingernails, and your mother scrubs your fingers just as hard as your sisters’, your father reads you the same stories before bed, and you’re both equally restless under your respective covers when it comes time to go to sleep, both wiggling and giggling through a life of complete ease that’s been provided for your by the sacrifices of your parents. Not that you know that.
Your differences are subtleties, and you are quite convinced that you notice them before anyone else does, very pleased with yourself for this introspection of independence. Truly, you are just learning what it is to be your own person. Boundless energy manifests itself in different ways. She is feisty, but your energies are always more calculated. You like direction and the feeling of accomplishment. What’s the point of climbing a ladder if you’ll never reach the top? What’s the point of chasing after something if you’re never going to catch it?
flying
Your mother scolds you for your contests.
Not everything is about winning, Linus. If you’re going to run, you want to run the fastest. If you’re going to jump, you want to jump the highest. You’ll do reckless things in order to be the best, and your parents slowly begin to realize that it’s not really about attention at all, but the thrill and the gratification of completion. Without much controversy, your father put you into Quidditch lessons right away.
You take to a child’s broom with ease and quickly ask for a real one. It’s not in your nature to throw a tantrum, but you wish that you could, spirit broken by magical protections that allow you no farther than six feet off the ground. He felt guilty for after asking why James Potter could have a
real broom and he could not, when his father told him that he couldn’t always have everything at once, that it wasn’t fair, polite, or becoming to compare oneself to others. As a child whose blood ran on comparisons and achievements, it felt like a giant slap in the face. Your sister was your only ear- she
got it.
She turned people green when they confined her into a box.
Your patience was not so much rewarded as it was simply short-lived. And you did exactly what you were not supposed to when that first CleanSweep touched your palm- you jetted towards the sky and screamed, because you were alive and assured and terrified and complete all at once. This new world only fueled your fires- you could go higher, dive deeper, spin faster. You began to feel true thrill in the chase itself, your first tastes of true sport over spite.
hogwarts
At Hogwarts, which came quickly and like a deep cut, you were surrounded by new opportunity on all sides, with a new, overwhelming number of people, and not only those your age, but mostly those not, and all of those better, stronger, faster, cleverer than you, and by so much! Competition was no longer as simple as a run or a jump or a dive. You were in the long game now- you learned what it was to have a goal that was not a hoop.
And although your sentiments shifted from need to want, enveloped in patience, there was no question you would be placed in Slytherin, because for all your bravery in flight, your cleverness in strategy, and your comradery on the field, there was no mistaking your inner drives, so settled and unshifted from their conception years ago. You would forever seek the peak, and you would do the work necessary to get there. Thankfully, your new friends understood this innately as you did in ways that your family did not. And you missed them of course, this first year’s separation from his best friend a deep breath and a hearty cringe all rolled in one. But she, and they, were not too far behind.
dealing
You never fought much with your parents in your childhood. Only over bedtimes and broomsticks. And you could not appreciate your first drink of independence before they descended upon your new life. So you fought. Because you wanted to be
you with your new-found friends and not the son of the new and odd professor in the greenhouses. You wanted to be able to tumble to the ground during a Quidditch match after a hearty swipe towards those wings and
not be chastised for your lack of self-preservation in the Hospital Wing afterwards.
It was never enough to make you hate them. You would never hate them. But…come on….how great would it have been to be just like the rest of your friends, away from your parents during the most exciting years of your adolescence? To swear loudly outside a classroom and not have to hear about it later? To kiss a girl in the hallway without wondering if your
dad was around the corner? Each year, it was a little simpler to avoid them, politely of course, but each new year presented its own challenges. You were changing just as quickly as you were readjusting.
getting older
Smiles come easy to Longbottoms, and smiles are contagious.
You become known not only for your wicked tricks on a broom, but for your quiet, yet biting, sense of humor and your general lack of dramatics. It’s hard for your private life to get complicated when you do your absolute best to keep it that way. You’re the sweet Slytherin, the one whose fangs stay hidden and don’t house any venom inside them anyways. You’d rather study sitting around a table than alone, but you’d rather be out running than sitting at all. You don’t often turn down invitations or opportunities to be with your friends, but you don’t sacrifice your personal goals for those reasons.
Oh, Linus? He’s at the pitch. Typical.
It was no surprise that you made captain in your sixth year. You’d been seeking on the team since your third year, a poster-boy for the potential of a hard-working kid on a broom. Stats and equipment magazines littered the floor beneath your four poster; you had four different brooms in your locker down by the pitch; half your clothes were jerseyed in some way or another;
everyone knew that you wanted to be recruited. Their jabs and teases, well-spirited mostly, didn’t bother you in the slightest.
Some way or another, you always got to your goal.
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