A/N: Thanks for your support! Euro 2012 is now over (my afternoons are very depressing now) but at least I'll be going back to (or attempting to) my regular scribbling sessions.

Rowan gaped at him. "Pardon?"

"There are always two sides to the story, Rowan. You've just never heard it, or contemplated that one existed,"

She went quiet and twisted her hands in her lap. "It's not about being the good brother, it's about family Rowan," Regulus said impatiently. "Look, I know that parents aren't perfect, and god knows that mine are certainly not, but at the end of the day, they were the ones to raise you, who saw you go from a little baby to a grown woman or man. At the end of the day, unless you emancipate yourself from them, they're your still parents."

"Regulus I'm sorry, it's just hard for me to wrap around the idea that you actually like your parents," Rowan replied.

"Of course you would. You've only been told one side of the story. This is the thing Rowan, life isn't all black and white, there are a lot of grey areas in between. You've only heard the things that Sirius has told you about our family," Regulus gave her a hard look.

She squirmed in her seat. Sometimes she forgot Regulus was younger than her, in some ways, he was a lot older than most of them. Like now.

"Ok, so tell me your side," she retorted.

Regulus turned towards the piano again. He pressed a key and then stared out at the ballroom. "My parents raised us in the best way they thought was possible, Sirius may not agree that it was the right way, but they thought it was. Sirius…he always wanted to highlight the fact that he thought he was better than all of us, because he didn't buy into the whole pureblood rubbish, but it didn't make him any better. It just made him as arrogant as my parents are."

"Sirius isn't arrogant—" Rowan started but Regulus silenced her.

"I don't mean arrogant as in proud or vain of one's accomplishments or looks, I mean arrogant in the fact that he flouted the fact that he did not care for any of the traditions, he was so proud to be different from the rest of us, he shoved it in our faces, and that's not nice. You want to be different? Fine, but when you're still living at home, you need to respect your parents, and remember to keep yourself in check. You don't need to apply permanent sticking charms to posters of muggle girls in bikinis, which by the way, is a little crude," Regulus said flatly.

Rowan agreed with him on that. "Ok yes, half naked pictures of girls on the wall is a bit crude,"

"At least let them be artsy or something, or done by some famous artist like Picassso or whatever," Regulus grumbled.

"Sirius was unhappy at home," Rowan reminded him.

Regulus just looked at her. "We're all unhappy at home," he said quietly.

"Pardon?"

"My father never pays attention to her, he's always busy with business or his other affairs…and my mother…she's the neglected trophy wife. We're, or rather, I'm, all she has. Sirius was unhappy at home, yeah, and he made it known, which made my mother even more unhappy. And I hated seeing her like that. So I tried my best, even went out my way to highlight that I follow all the rules, I comply with all the traditions, that I was proud to be a Black, in effort to make her less sad."

"So what about you? If everyone else in your family is apparently unhappy, are you too?" Rowan asked bluntly.

A weary look came on his face. "I'm just as unhappy as them Rowan. And I have been, since I was twelve,"

"What happened when you were twelve?" Rowan was confused.

He shrugged. "I don't know. I woke up one day…and it's like something shut off inside me. I haven't been truly happy in a long time Rowan. It doesn't help that my family is torn apart either. My mum was devastated when Sirius ran away. She couldn't get out of bed for a week, she didn't eat or anything, she just cried. It scared me," he said quietly.

Rowan stilled and looked at him. She would have never thought that Sirius running away from home, would have affected those around him so profoundly. But it had, and it was evidenced by the slight boy sitting in front of her.

"Our house isn't the same any more, you know," Regulus moodily continued. "Christmas…we all acted like everything was fine, but I know that my mum was crying on Christmas day again when she passed by his room. Sirius may hate her, but no parents truly hate their children. They may be upset with them and disown them, but deep down, I'd like to think that she still cares about the fact that he was her son. It's hard for a mother to suddenly lose her children, in any way really,"

"Yeah, it is," Rowan thought of her childhood friend Katerina who had died. Her parents had never been the same after that either.

"You said that you haven't been happy in a long time, what do you mean?" Rowan asked swiftly.

Regulus gave her a wry smile. "It means exactly that. I'm not a happy person Rowan, part of it stems from the environment I was brought up in, but most of it has to do with my head. There's just…something not right there, I think. At quidditch matches, when I'm watching and my team is winning, I'm not jumping up and down screaming, I'm just sitting there, watching everything around me. I…I feel like I'm watching myself in a film or something, this life is just one big movie or book and I'm a character in it. I feel..detached from myself, does that make sense?"

It did. It suddenly struck Rowan that what he was describing sounded a lot like depression. He sounded a lot like her when she was in her low cycles.

"Regulus…do you ever go through periods of maniacal happiness?" she asked.

"Pardon?"

"Do you ever feel like you're invincible sometimes? Do you ever have periods of time where you go about doing a lot of things that you wouldn't normally be doing?"

"No," he gave her a strange look.

Oh. Ok so he wasn't like her and a maniac depressive. Well that was good. Kind of. She knew firs thand that when she was in her maniac periods she did a lot of stupid, and dangerous things.

"Regulus," she said after a beat.

"What?"

"It sounds like you have depression," she said gently.

He blinked. "Depression? As in feeling blue all the time kind of depression? I don't feel sad Rowan, I'm just not happy,"

"That's also a form of depression," she explained.

"I'm confused. How would you know what depression is?"

"Because," she gave him a lopsided smile. "I have maniac depression. I go through wild mood swings, I go from being insanely happy to scarily sad and violent in a matter of days, hours sometimes. But sometimes I'll have months of a depressive cycle, and I won't do anything. Then sometimes I'll be maniacal happy for three months and end up doing things that I know I shouldn't do. It's a miracle that I haven't died yet,"

"What kind of things do you do when you're insane?" Regulus asked apprehensively.

"Attempt to fly underwater with a broom," she replied.

"What?"

"Yeah. Believe me, it was not pretty. I think I was in my fourth year when I did that. Maybe fifth," she thought back.

"Do you have a death wish upon yourself or something? It's bad enough that you send yourself to the Hospital Wing every other week or so with your tinkering on magic, but now you're telling me that you go off on these maniacal moods and you go crazy?" Regulus threw up his hands.

"I don't go crazy…I just don't think straight," Rowan defended.

"Since when have you ever thought straight?" Regulus demanded.

"Hey!"

"If I'm depressed, if that's the clinical term for it, then fine. But to me it's not the same. Depressed means not eating, crying, sleeping a lot, or not sleeping, shutting yourself off from the world, that kind of stuff."

"There's many forms of depression Regulus," she said quietly.

"Being depressed and not being happy aren't necessarily the same thing," Regulus protested.

"They might not be, but…let me honest with you Regulus, you shut yourself up in your books, you think an awful lot…that's kind of a defence mechanism," she looked at him tentatively.

"Against what?"

"Against not living,"

"Living?"

"You're not…living life. You're just sitting on the sidelines, not playing the game, watching every one else run past you,"

"I am living! I'm not dead am I!" he said indignantly.

"Regulus, I'm not attacking you," she gently interrupted. Regulus scooted over as she came over and sat next to him. Turning fully to face him, she said, "I'm just telling you what I think, but this is the thing Regulus, life is both long and short."

"What?"

"You're only going to have one life on this earth Regulus, and you can't spend your days watching everyone else live. You need to live too."

"It's not exactly the easiest thing to do when you never feel happy," he muttered.

"It isn't being about being happy or unhappy Regulus, for some of us, that's not really a apart of the equation, life is more than that for us,"

"Then tell me, what's it about?"

"It's about making each day count," she told him.

Regulus pressed another key and digested this. "Making each day count. Like how?"

"Like…doing something different, expanding yourself, going out of your comfort zone, trying to work through your inner voices that plague you, trying to make yourself a better person than you were yesterday,"

A quiet, grave expression graced his features. "Well then today definitely counts then,"

"Oh yeah why?" she asked curiously.

"Because I would have never thought about playing the piano, for anyone, and here I am,"

"Here you are," she smiled.

His lips twitched. "Sometimes I kind of loathe you,"

"Why is that?" she teased.

"Because you tend to bring out the best in me, which ruins my Slytherin credibility, and you also tend to bring out things that I tend not to think about. It forces me to really…I don't know. Take a good look at myself, see what I'm doing right, doing wrong,"

"Well that's what friends do,"

"Right, because you're my friend," he said looking at her with unfathomable eyes.

"Exactly, because I'm your friend," she affirmed slowly looking right back at him.

There was only a sliver of space between them. To Rowan, the distance seemed both deceptively small, but terrifyingly huge at the same time.

Regulus felt something shift between them and he did not like it.

He knew, that if he didn't do something soon, something very, very bad would happen. And he couldn't let that happen.

He shifted another inch or two, away from her, putting some more distance between them. A flicker of disappointment went through her eyes for a moment.

However, deep down in his heart, he knew that he couldn't cross that line. He just couldn't. And it wasn't because she was a Gryffindor and he was a Slytherin, no it was something more nobler than that, nobler and stupider than that.

It was because of his bloody brother.

He had seen the way his brother had looked at her, even when they weren't talking to each other, and he had never seen that look on his brother's face when he was with his previous girlfriends. Few people would believe it, but Regulus, unfortunately, knew his brother better than anyone, and he could read his brother's expression like a book. He knew this, because he was exactly the same as him.

His brother cared for her very much, it was obvious to him, and Regulus would respect that. He did not want to make his brother's life any more miserable than it already was.

Yes, they didn't get along, and they had different outlooks on life, and Sirius had ran away from home and torn apart his family, but at the end of the day, he was still his brother. They were flesh, bone and blood. Regulus still cared about him, even if he couldn't show it. He would never want any harm to come to him.

And he would never want to screw his brother over. Ever. So that's why he turned away from her and instead said, "Would you like to me play another song?"

"Please," she nodded.

Regulus began playing again and Rowan watched him. Regulus only had eyes for the ballroom that he could see from the piano, but unbeknownst to him Rowan only had eyes for him at the point in time.

A/N: I promise, Sirius returns in the next chapter in all of his glory. Sorry for this short chapter, next one will be longer I assure you. I'd really appreciate if you could review! (Sirius is very impatient to get your attention)