McGonagall was glaring at him again. She seemed to always be glaring at him.
"What possessed you to do this, Mr Black?" she asked him in her "dangerous" voice. "Why must you treat the Slytherins this way? You are seventeen years old! I would think you would have grown out of this nonsense by now!"
"That thing deserved it!" he yelled at her, still incensed from the fight.
"That thing," McGonagall growled at him, "is your brother! And now he's in the Hospital Wing!"
"I don't care!" he shouted. "I hate him!"
McGonagall pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing. "And why, exactly, do you hate him, Mr Black?" He thought she actually sounded concerned for him. This concern caught him by surprise. He hadn't known she cared...
"I don't know." He sighed. "I've hated him as far back as I remember." Sirius hated lying to his favourite teacher, but what was he supposed to tell her? The truth?
~~~ Ten Years Ago ~~~
"Siwi?" Regulus waddled into Sirius' room. Sirius sniffed the tears back, the blood still running down his face. He could feel the tenderness on his body where the bruises would form.
Sirius sniffed again. "Hey Reg," he muttered to his baby brother. He opened his arms, and Regulus climbed onto Sirius' seven-year-old lap, his back pressed against Sirius's front..
"Siwi?" Regulus asked again. "Why does Mummy and Daddy hurt you?"
"'Cuz they don't like me, Reg," Sirius explained. "They think I'm bad."
"But you isn't bad, Siwi!" five-year-old Regulus argued, hugging his brother. "You isn't! They is the bad ones! They maked you bleed!" Sirius wiped the tears from Regulus' face before pushing his little brother's black bangs out of his eyes. His fingers came back sticky and wet.
Sirius narrowed his eyes. "Reg, turn around." Regulus turned himself. Sirius pushed back his brother's bangs and felt his heart lodge itself somewhere in his throat and stop beating.
"Reg, why is your forehead bleeding?"
Regulus looked proud of himself. "I yelled at Daddy fo' hurtin' you, Siwi! I told him he is a stupid meanie and that you was wight about 'da Muggles!" Regulus grinned at his brother, hoping beyond hope that the older boy would be proud of him.
Sirius closed his eyes, tears welling up inside them. He gulped as he thought of what he had to say next.
"Reg..." he said slowly. "Reg, you can't do that anymore."
Regulus looked up at him, confused and hurt. "Why, Siwi?"
Sirius sighed, the tears spilling over and sliding silently down his face. "'Cuz I can't watch them hurt you, Reg! And they'll hate you like they hate me!" He sniffed again, this time choking back a small sob. "I don't want them to hate you, Reg. You deserve to be loved by your Mummy and Daddy. I don't want them to hate you like they hate me!"
"But-" Regulus' lip started to quiver. "But I love you, Siwi!"
Sirius sobbed again. "I love you to, Reg. But this can't happen to you, too!" He sucked in a deep breath. "You've got to do just what they want you to, Reg. You've got to be just like them. Make them proud of you, Reg."
"But they're meanies!" Regulus gasped. "I don't wanna be a meanie, Siwi! I wanna be good like you!"
Sirius smiled sadly at his brother, warmth and pain filling his heart at the same time. "But you can't be, Reg. You've got to be like them. You've got to, Reg!"
"But I don't wanna!" Regulus began to cry. Sirius frowned. This wasn't working. He thought hard...
"Okay, Reg. You don't haf'ta hate me."
"I don'?" Regulus asked, glancing up at his brother with tears streaking down his face.
"Nope," Sirius tried to smile. "We'll just play a game, Reg. How about that? We'll play a game."
"A - a game?" Regulus swiped a hand under his runny nose.
"A game," Sirius confirmed. "We'll jus' pretend we hate each other, okay Reg?"
"Patend?" Regulus asked.
"Just pretend," Sirius said. "And if Mummy and Daddy figure it out, then we lose, okay? So we gotta convince Mummy and Daddy we hate each other. Okay, Reg?"
"Just patending?" Regulus checked.
"Just pretending," Sirius nodded at his brother. He hugged the small boy to his chest. "I love you, Regulus."
"I wuv you too, Siwius," Regulus hugged back. He climbed down from his brother's lap and crossed to the door.
"Hey! Reg!" Sirius called. Regulus turned around to see his brother's face shining with tears again.
"Huh?"
"I hate you," Sirius said with a small, sad smile.
Regulus sniffed. "I hate you too, Siwi."
~~~ Many Years Later ~~~
Regulus stood on the island in the large cave, his house elf, Kreacher, beside him. He was shaking, hard. He was frightened.
"I remember that day, Sirius," he whispered quietly. "That day, oh so many years ago." He sniffed, feeling the same as he had that day, the day he considered the worst day of his life.
"I always did what they told me to, Siri, even though it made me sick." He grinned mockingly. "Hell, I even became a Death Eater because they wanted me to. I was always so rude to you, Siri, and you were such a jerk to me. But even though I never showed it, I looked up to you. You were my idol. What I wished to be but never could be." He paused, wishing he could be saying these things to his brother and not just the air. He wanted Sirius to know...
" I never stopped pretending, Sirius. Maybe you did," Regulus took the shell from Kreacher. "Maybe you did, but I didn't." He drank the potion and shuddered, falling to the ground. "I hope you can be proud of me now, Sirius. Please be proud of me now." He drew a shuddering breath, tears running down his face as Kreacher came back with a second shell full. "I love you, big brother." He gulped in pain, the sobs racking his body. He swallowed shell full after shell full of the awful potion, convulsions racking his body. Finally, the potion was gone. He watched Kreacher switch the necklaces with tears running down his face. He crawled slowly, painfully, down to the edge of the lake and took a drink of the cool, soothing water. He felt the rotted hand grip his arm. He whispered one more thing before the body dragged him under to his death.
"I love you."