Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

"Regulus, sit down," Severus Snape snapped irritably. "Black won't look over here so give it up."

"Excuse me for trying to glare him to death," I snapped back venomously. "It's a sight better than what you can do, Snivellus."

"At least we don't share blood," Severus replied coldly, and our conversation ended. I sat down and shoved food into my mouth, to Severus' satisfaction, but I couldn't keep my eyes away from the Gryffindor table. I searched the length of it before I caught sight of him sitting with his little cronies. There he sat in all his goody-goody glory, laughing it up with that blood traitor Potter, the chunky Pettigrew and the bookworm Lupin. I scowled from across the Great Hall at Sirius Black, my brother.

I hate him.

He left the family in July to live with Potter and it broke poor Mother's heart. She had been passably livable before, but ever since Sirius' departure she had become a nightmare. It hadn't sat well with her, losing her oldest son, never mind that he was a blood traitor and profaned The Dark Lord's name. In a fit of rage she blasted his name off the family tree, trying to forget he was ever a member of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. He marked the second Black failure—Cousin Andromeda had been blasted off some years before when she married that mudblood.

Our family wasn't used to failure. For centuries we'd been the best purebloods around. You couldn't find a family better at being true to our heritage, a family more talented or with more connections anywhere. The Black family simply was the best.

Now we had two angry, red blotches and they were both in my generation. We were no longer the best, and it irked Mother.

But what really got me was that when Sirius left, he left me behind. He left me alone. He left me alone with a psychotic old cow who desperately wanted to prove she hadn't been the mother of Failure, just the mother of a failure. That left me alone with a woman determined to make me the best damn pureblood around, meant for great things and destined to be a follower of the Dark Lord.

The problem with Mother's little obsession is she forgot I'm Regulus, the younger, less talented brother. When sending the Black brothers to Earth, God had decided to give Sirius everything—brains, looks, and pure, raw talent. He never studied and was near the top of his year in everything. He had inherited all of the Black good looks and used them to get any bird on his arm, and so far he hadn't found one he fancied that wasn't willing to let Sirius Black have his way with her. His magical powers surpassed nearly everybody in the school, and with hardly any effort he mastered every new spell sent his way, especially in Transfiguration. He was good.

I didn't have a brain to save my life. I holed myself in my room with every book I could get to make decent marks so I would have the skills later in life to succeed. I studied like there was no tomorrow and still barely scraped by. The Blacks are generally considered to be beautiful people, whether or not you like us, but every few generations one ugly duckling is born and never transforms into the Black Swan. Lucky me happened to be that person. Sirius and I look alike, but only enough to say we're related. We both have the Black black hair and the Black grey eyes and the Black stiff neck, but he got the chiseled face and smooth cheeks while I got the bird's nose, jutting chin and greasy skin. You couldn't pay a girl to go with me. And the only thing I had talent in was memorizing Dark spells. Doesn't mean I could use them, only that I could memorize them and spit them out at will. Good little Regulus, the walking talking Dark library.

Sirius was good, full of conviction, and couldn't be forced to do anything. I was useless and could be molded to fit anyone's desires because I had no goals for myself. If Severus or Lupin or anybody had told Sirius to sit down at dinner, he probably would have grabbed his plate and ate standing up just to prove he didn't have to listen. Not me. I bend to others' wills because, as Mother likes to point out, I don't have one of my own. Once again Sirius is better than me.

So even though I fail in every way imaginable, when Mother decided to make me her pet I let her because it meant somebody wanted me.

Unlike Sirius.

He must have wanted me once, because when we were younger we played together. He was the one who taught me how to fly on a broom and how to play Quidditch. He encouraged me to fly higher even though I was terrified of heights, and the one time I actually listened and flew higher I fell off my broom, but he was there at my side seconds after I hit the ground.

Mother never knew about that incident, because Sirius took care of me and patched up my scrapes.

And then he made me get back on my broom and fly again, even though I was crying and scared. I overcame my fear of heights that day, something I doubt I would have been able to do without him.

But he doesn't want me anymore. Now all he wants is precious Potter and loony Lupin and pudgy Pettigrew. Who cares about the little brother?

Someone once said blood is thicker than water, but it's a lie because Sirius and I share blood but he chooses the Gryffindor water over me.

He's laughing now, probably over something Potter said. Hatred burns deep within me. How can he laugh when Mother is at home, miserable because of him? How can he laugh when I'm piercing him with the fiery daggers of my eyes? How can he laugh at all? He lost his family. Gave us up. Where's the room for laughter there?

But he is laughing, and that's how we all know that he never cared.

"Be careful, Regulus, or your face might stay that way forever," Alecto Carrow said smugly. I bared my teeth at her, but she just laughed. "You are so delicious when you do that."

"Sod off," I snapped.

"Feel free to lick your wounds over your dear, departed brother," she simpered, "but know that I, along with most of our house, am watching you."

I knew she was right. Nothing went unnoticed in Slytherin; you never knew when your tiny tidbit of gossip might give you leverage.

Reverting my scowl to my food, I let bitterness surge through me, but not directed at Sirius—it was directed at my own house. They would never know what it felt like to lose a brother because they all came from respectable Pureblood families. No one in their families would ever desert, and they had no fear of their loved ones being eliminated by the Dark Lord. None of them would ever feel the pain I felt.

"I heard Black call Potter his brother," Evan Rosier said. I heard the disdain with which he said Black, and it was not something I was used to hearing. Mother would be beside herself if she heard the family name used so, but what else were we going to do, call him Sirius? That showed he mattered enough to have a name, and he didn't. He was beneath us.

But even more than hearing the disdain I felt lonely. Sirius would never call me brother again. He had chosen someone new, completely cutting off all ties to our family. I had been replaced by Potter, a mudblood-loving blood traitor. Sirius couldn't have picked worse to replace me with, except maybe a werewolf or a mudblood, and thankfully there were no werewolves at Hogwarts and none of his friends were mudbloods.

"He's an embarrassment to society," Avery hissed. "Good for nothing. If it weren't for his mother the Dark Lord would have ended his pathetic existence already."

"Don't be stupid, Avery," Severus snapped. "He isn't worth the Dark Lord's time. But don't worry. Black will get what's coming to him in time."

I clenched my fist under the table so tight I felt my fingernails draw blood from my palm. They were talking about my brother in front of me as if he were a common mudblood. He might have been a blood traitor, but he was still my blood traitor and I didn't want them to talk about him. That was my job.

"Are we making you uncomfortable, Regulus?" Alecto said. "We forget he is your brother."

"Why should it bother me when you speak truth?" I lied smoothly. She grinned nastily at me.

"That's why I like you so much, Regulus," she half-cooed. "You know how things ought to be. You aren't a rotten egg."

"But I am a Black sheep," I said with a grin. And I was a Black sheep. But I wasn't a black sheep, and for that alone Sirius would never look my way. I tried to be a good son and please my parents and do what was expected of me, and in return I got shunted aside like a piece of week old maggoty steak.

I followed the rules and look where it got me.

I hate Sirius Black.