Regulus sighed as he looked over at Sirius and his friends sitting at the Gryffindor table. He was proud to be in Slytherin house, he really was, but that still didn't change the fact that he missed his brother. They had never been very close, but there had always been an understanding of sorts between them. Now, though, he just felt they were growing even further apart. Both of them had gone home for the Christmas holidays, and apart from the occasional "Hey" or the "Pass the salt", neither of them had had much to say to each other. With a smile, Regulus remembered Sirius' last summer before he started at Hogwarts for the first time. They had both had a lot of fun, and Sirius, always the rebellious one, had played several jokes on his parents and laughed every time they got irritated. Regulus remembered laughing along and admiring his elder brother's wit and his 'I'm not afraid of anything' attitude, and wishing that he, too, could be like that. He remembered being slightly envious of Sirius too, and wishing he was the favourite with his parents for once instead of Sirius. It was no secret that Sirius had been the favourite, he always had been, even though he constantly rebelled against anything his parents told him to do, and Regulus would always do what they said just for that little bit of attention. However, things had become the complete opposite ever since Sirius had been chosen for Gryffindor, and been extremely proud of the fact too. Sirius did not seem to care that he was no longer the favourite child anymore, and Regulus always felt he was trying to distance himself from the family more and more every passing day. Regulus himself felt the complete opposite to how he had thought he would feel - considering that he had wished to be his parents' favourite child for as long as he could remember, he now wished things could go back to the way they had always been before. Ever since he had been chosen for Slytherin, his parents had bestowed even more pride in him - he was clearly the favourite now. Why was it, he wondered to himself now, that every wish that came true had to have a price attached to it, a price that was sometimes so painful to pay that one would rather have their wish become untrue instead of paying that price? Why did that price, no matter how small, have to change things so much? With another sigh, he wondered that if he had never wished for this to happen, would it still have happened? Would he still find a way to blame himself for Sirius' distanced attitude towards him and the family? Sometimes he wished he could change his parents' attitudes towards Sirius, but in his heart he knew he could not. He could never rebel against anything they believed in, not like Sirius had. 'I did wish I was the favourite, that they would pay me more attention than they used to', he thought sadly, 'but I wouldn't want it, not for this price.' He was the favourite one now, but only because Sirius wasn't, because Sirius had never cared about being a favourite, had never done anything about it. After all of Regulus' attempts, he had finally succeeded, but he wished he hadn't. How he wished he hadn't. With a sad smile, he wondered, 'It's funny how things turn out, they make you think whether you ever really knew yourself at all, whether you ever know what you truly want. Circumstances change, people change, and people's thoughts and wishes with them. We want things, and often when we get those things, we discover that they weren't what we really wanted after all. I would give anything for things to be the way they were, but we all must go on, and each holiday at home I must continue to pretend I despise you, or they will despise me. I just hope that I will always be pretending, and that it won't become real.'