Understandably, Sirius was Not Happy.

As soon as the pair floo'd into Grimmauld Place's kitchen from the gala, the man whirled on Harry with a gleam of madness in his eye.

"Him?" Sirius hissed. "Does it really have to be him?" The man seethed.

"I guess," Harry answered fairly easily.

"But – that – it's – him?" Sirius stressed once more, furious. A red blush of rage flushed the man's neck and he paced furiously, always the Grim.

"Yes," Harry confirmed as he sat down heavily onto a creaking wooden chair, wondering if Sirius was about to have a heart attack. That wouldn't be pleasant.

"Harry," Sirius then said, stopping, eyes full of insanity and rage and something Harry couldn't quite decipher. "He killed Lily and James, your parents. He's killed so many people. Oh Godric, Malfoy's head," Sirius said, hands coming up to grip his skull. The words rang in Harry's head.

"Yes," Harry said again. He knew.

"But – you – I just," Sirius babbled then, waffling in the face of Harry's frankness. "Get out!" Sirius then roared, voice shaking in hatred as he threw a hand towards the door.

"Okay," Harry said, realising that this should have been expected. It wasn't, but it should have been. Something inside his chest shattered. Harry stood to leave.

"No, wait," Sirius then said, wringing his wrists, snapping from rage to fear in a heartbeat. "Don't go – just listen to me, please," he pleaded.

Harry sat back down.

"I can't disown you," Sirius whispered in sudden contrast to his catastrophic rage, collapsing into a wooden chair on the other side of the kitchen table as if all fight had left him. "Not how my parents did. Not how my mother did. I... It just feels like the opposite. Me kicking you out for something dark when my parents kicked me out for something light."

Harry doesn't know why Sirius is telling him this.

He knows.

"Why, Harry?" Sirius asked then, eyes welling with tears and words exposing the raw breaking of his heart.

Harry looked at his godfather, then – or father, was it now? – and sighed.

"I don't know," Harry answered, wishing he did

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"What's wrong?" Voldemort asked, face pinched in irritation. Well, as pinched as the emotionless mask could be. "I can feel your despair. Stop it."

Harry watched the man from across Doctor Welsh's desk. He didn't speak.

"You're acting like a child," Voldemort hissed, sharp nails digging into mahogany and splintering the hard wood, face alight with contempt. "You're two minutes away from summoning green slime. It's revolting."

Harry didn't respond other than to tilt his head and wallow in the hollowness eating at his chest.

"Potter," Voldemort then said Very Seriously, eyes brighter than smelting steel. "If you don't stop this tantrum, I will kill you. Horcrux or not."

Harry knew that his anguish was transmitting to Voldemort. Voldemort did not do well with emotions. Harry felt a lot of them, but they were often supressed to the point they exploded in a dramatic array of colours at random intervals. This was one of those times.

"Sirius is mad at me," Harry said into the dark room.

"I'll kill him too, then," Voldemort sneered back. It was said in cruelty but Harry knew the man wasn't joking. Voldemort doesn't jest when it comes to death.

"No, thank you," Harry answered distantly. "This is me. All me."

"What has your filthy mutt done now?" The man scowled, not completely tamed but not nearly as enraged as he was a moment ago, as if a protective flame had burnt itself out at Harry's appeasing words. Harry hid a smile at the reaction.

Voldemort was a strange concoction of human and monster. It shouldn't charm Harry, but it was similar to his take on beasts.

"Nothing unexpected," Harry answered, leaning into the hard chair and tipping it perilously onto its back two feet as he rocked, feet braced against the desk. "What have you been doing for the last year?" He asked lightly, interested in leading the conversation away from his godfather's imminent death. Sure, Harry knew Sirius would die one day. But not Right Now would be nice.

Voldemort looked irritated by the change of conversation. To be honest, Harry supposed it was very difficult to understand Voldemort at all. But Harry watched and watched until he could see even the barest of twitch in the man's stoic expression and deduced from there. Voldemort was almost easier to read than his First Year potion's text.

"Work," Voldemort drawled darkly, fingers tattering that stressful tempo on the wood of the desk. "Always work."

"You should take a week off. Playing every now and then does everyone a bit of good," Harry stated suddenly as he smiled mischievously, leaning forward sharply and chair clattering onto all four feet as he noticed the stress lines in Voldemort's jaw. The minute dip of the man's brow. The stronger than normal twist of his lips.

Voldemort's eyes glittered dangerously as one of his eyebrows twitched. Harry smiled even wider. It was taking more and more to really piss the monster off but, when Harry managed it, he revelled in the experience. Perhaps Voldemort was becoming desensitised to Harry's madness. Perhaps Harry just needed to redouble his efforts.

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Harry watches Voldemort from across the entrance chamber to the Ministry of Magic, an immense welcoming hall featuring a large statue of magical creatures, wizards and muggles. It is a magnificent thing. Harry knows that Voldemort will replace it within his first year of office (for he has won the Minister of Magic elections). Voldemort is temperamental like that.

Voldemort, or Tom Riddle, is giving his first speech in the echoing atrium of the Ministry of Magic, expanded to hold over a thousand souls, an amphitheatre lovingly echoing words like equality and abolishment and truth. Voldemort preaches trigger phrases Harry knows people will adore; it's a speech that incites a sense of freedom, of success in voting in a champion, a golden falsehood spun by an idealised revolutionary. It's a work of art, that speech, and Harry knows it will go down in the libraries of the future as true history. It's a beautiful, perilous, consumable lie.

Harry has no doubt that Voldemort wrote it himself.

The crowd swoons as Sirius, Remus and Hermione shake in silent rage.

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When Harry returns to Grimmauld Place after the public speech, the house is eerily quiet. It's always somewhat creepy and silent, but very rarely is Sirius and Remus not here when Harry is. Remus, Sirius and Hermione have remained behind and Harry suspects they're under instructions from the Order of The Phoenix to perform some kind of mission. They think he doesn't know, but Harry does; to be honest, he merely doesn't care enough to comment on it.

Harry met Kreacher, the Black house elf, back at the end of third year when he moved into № 12 Grimmauld Place. Kreacher is an odd creature, full of anger and angst and misguided racist ideologies. Sirius and Kreacher obviously don't get along terribly well, but Remus has forced Sirius to stop nagging the beast and Harry simply wished that Kreacher wouldn't be able to find Sirius even when he wanted to, so the house fell into a somewhat uneasy but overall bearable state of peace.

"Here comes the half-blood traitor," Kreacher announced wretchedly as Harry shook off his over-robes, hanging them on a coat hook in the entrance hallway.

Harry glanced down the hall to see Kreacher lurking at the top of the stairs of the first landing, glaring down at Harry with glowing, suspicious eyes.

"Hello, Kreacher. How are you today?" Harry enquired not unkindly, knowing that simply ignoring the creature invited more insults while engaging in his nastiness often resulted in all one's clothing being burnt up (Sirius had actually cried when his leather jacket collection was found to be mostly ashes in the kitchen fireplace).

"Filthy, filthy halfblood," Kreacher muttered angrily before turning and stomping up the stairs. "Follow the Kreachers," the angrily little elf instructed as he got further away.

Harry decided to follow the little ancient elf out of sheer curiosity, suddenly wondering what the tiny terror did all day, especially as he very rarely left the house. Harry quietly crept behind the beast, shadowing him quietly. Harry knows that Kreacher probably won't hurt him; there's always been an uneasy truce between the two of them. Kreacher calls him names but makes him meals, Harry ignores the insults makes sure Sirius leaves him alone. Their deal has never been spoken aloud, but it's there all the same.

Kreacher finally makes it to Sirius and Remus' bedroom landing, walking towards the couple's bedroom door. Harry feels himself bristle, a little annoyed. If the elf has decided to push his luck and try to enter the room, which Sirius warded against such a thing, Harry would have to get involved. No matter their quiet truce, Harry certainly doesn't trust Kreacher to not hurt Sirius and Remus.

Instead of entering Sirius' room, to Harry's surprise, Kreacher keeps walking until he passes Sirius' bedroom door and then walks another two meters. At the very end of the dead-end hallway, a door appears on the wall under Kreacher's quietly spoken password.

The door has clearly been untouched for many years. There are no cobwebs, but the dust at the end of the hallway has long been undisturbed and there are no track marks or signs of wear having occurred in the past decade in the hallway after Sirius' bedroom door. Harry had assumed that Sirius had the entire floor with the exception of the storage closet on the other side of the landing. But seeing the door appear now, an ancient wooden thing with rusting hinges and a seal on the handle, Harry knows this belongs to Sirius' long-forgotten baby brother. An R-something. Sirius has never really spoken of it and Harry has never really asked.

Kreacher stared forward at the door and Harry observed Kreacher.

"Master Regulus," Kreacher whispers, his scratchy, unused voice cracking. Ah, Regulus. That's right.

"Why are you showing this to me now?" Harry asked softly, seeing the slight tremble of Kreacher's thin shoulders.

"Something very important to Masters Regulus goes missing from my cupboard in Yule," Kreacher whispered at the doorframe, refusing to turn and look at Harry.

"The locket belonged to Regulus?" Harry pressed, surprised by Kreacher's words.

"Masters Regulus entrusted the locketsies to Kreacher," Kreacher bit out, finally throwing a sharp look over his shoulder at Harry. "And Harry Potter be stealing it."

"I guess you could say Regulus took it first and then I simply picked it up when it called," Harry shrugged. "I don't mean to imply he's a thief, because I don't know that for sure. It probably wouldn't be the first time one of those trinkets were entrusted to the Dark Lord's worshippers."

Kreacher shuddered. "The Dark Lord did not wants Masters Regulus to have the locket," he admitted.

"Then how did you come to have it?" Harry asked, mystified as to Kreacher's sudden openness. Harry had never heard Kreacher speak one word of Regulus Black but, now that he was, it was clear the young heir had meant much to the old elf.

Kreacher reached forward and opened the door to Regulus' room, the ward allowing it. Harry realised the elf must have been the one to put the protection spells on the room in the first place. It smelt like a cemetery, that ward. Harry wouldn't be surprised if it were a crypt curse.

Harry followed the house elf into the room and was surprised to note that it appeared as if Regulus Black had only just stepped out, for it was a snapshot of a time long gone. There were neatly piled books on a slightly messy desk, a quill still in an inkwell and stained black by the long-dried substance. The large four-poster bed was made slightly sloppily, an indication that it was handmade rather than by a house elf's precision magic. A pair of slippers waited next to a large wardrobe and a massive window pane shone bright light into the room, heavy velvet curtains pulled back by large cords. The room was about the size of a small studio flat and Harry could see an entrance to an ensuite, the door ajar and showing a glimpse of rich marble.

It looked as if Regulus had only just left and the room was awaiting patiently for his return, the man not a moment's notice away from returning. The only evidence that it would never happen was the sheer amount of dust covering everything, coating each surface with time and the light flooding through the window fading each fabric and exposed piece of timber.

It was a shrine, untouched by a Black family member since Regulus' disappearance and assumed death. It filled Harry with an odd, insurmountable amount of sadness.

"Mistress Black never be finding the bodies," Kreacher said into the room, the high ceilings providing a slight echo.

"What happened to Regulus, Kreacher?" Harry asked, feeling like it was time.

The story Kreacher told was horrific. Dead bodies possessed back to life, purifying flame burning them up. Kreacher sacrificed to lay in a cave for eternity with only Inferi and poison for company. Regulus pressing a locket in Kreacher's hands, giving himself so that the house elf could live and destroy a tie holding Voldemort to the mortal plane.

Harry sat down on the dusty floor as Kreacher explained with a wavering voice, not minding the dust surely grinding into his robes. Regulus sounded oddly like himself in a way, a boy raised in a horrible household and minding the rules, doing as he was told so that he could pass by mostly sight-unseen. Then deciding at last to act and, for it, destroying himself in the process.

It was a terribly sad story. It made Harry feel suffocated and lonely, transporting him back to a time when he lived in a cupboard and wished only to be invisible.

At last, just when Harry didn't think he could listen to a second more, Kreacher stopped talking.

"Does Sirius know this?" Harry asked after a long stretch of silence passed.

"The blood traitor never be asking," Kreacher whispered heartlessly, twisting his hands as he looked down at his hands.

"I think Sirius has a right to know that his brother attempted redemption in the end," Harry said. Kreacher didn't scowl nor fight Harry's opinion; Harry got the impression Kreacher was telling him now to clear Regulus' name. Kreacher would never be able to open up to Sirius like this, not really, so Harry was the next best thing.

"But let's leave out the Dark Lord's influence on the locket," Harry added, knowing that he couldn't say Voldemort's name without eliciting a horrible response from the demented elf.

"What does the halfblood wish to do with the locketsies?" Kreacher whispered once more, tone scathing and distrustful, as he shot Harry a filthy glare.

"I'm not sure yet," Harry answered truthfully. "I probably won't destroy it. But I promise you I'll honour Regulus' sacrifice."

It was an ambiguous promise, one that Harry wasn't sure how to uphold, but it seemed to relieve Kreacher all the same.

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Hermione decided to go rouge and wrote a rather scathing opinion editorial about the Minister of Magic for The Daily Prophet. She doesn't dare mention Tom Riddle's true identity, for she knows that people will undoubtfully laugh in her face in dismissive scepticism if she does, but she points out an entire host of reasonable things that will sway people's opinions. Now that Riddle is Prime Minister of Magic, the papers consider him free game to tear down. He'd paid good gold for them to be on his side during the elections, but now they're savage.

Hermione's op-ed ponders Riddle's mysterious disappearance from the public eye for a few decades, his sudden re-emergence and immediate rise to power under Fudge's watchful eye. Hermione muses Riddle's ambitions, his campaign promises, his failure to keep his word from time to time. She leads the reader along a path to distrust. It's powerful and persuasive, Hermione's article.

Harry knows immediately that Riddle will kill her. He drops the paper on the kitchen table of Manor Black and spins on his heel, disapparating on the spot.

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"Stop," Harry states, having appeared in Hermione's living room with a sharp crack! and finding Voldemort and Hermione pointing their wands at one another, tension crackling in the air.

"No, go ahead," Hermione goads, eyes wild. "Kill me! See what happens when the Minister of Magic silences free speech and murders investigative journalists!"

Voldemort has dropped his politician shell. He looks like the fourth horseman, hellfire eyes sparking and expression tighter than a drawn bow.

"Investigative journalism?" Voldemort repeats calmly, voice deep and treacherous. "Hardly. More like the shrilling of a mudblood shrew."

Hermione throws the first spell. Voldemort counters it before she's even finished her breath, sharper and faster than human.

Harry wished immediately that they would just Stop, reaching out and calling their wands towards his outstretched hands.

To Harry's amazement, time listened to his wordless command and he found himself staring at a still frame his two people, his pseudo sister and his – his... Well, his Voldemort. Voldemort's frozen form was contorted into the beginnings of a dueller's crouch, lithe fingers spread out and the sharp crackle of black magic spreading from his palms dangerously. Hermione's narrowed eyes glared at Voldemort, hate twisting her features into something dark and ugly, as she too bore the beginning position of a dueller.

"That's new," Harry stated as he observed time coming to a complete standstill, looking back and forth between Hermione and Voldemort, a vine wand in his right hand and an elderwood in his left.

"I must admit that was me," an ethereal voice answered, deep, echoing and ageless.

Harry spun slowly on his heel, turning to face the being behind himself. Harry came face to face with a young woman, perhaps twenty or twenty-five years old. She was pale, paler than natural, with long ashen hair and pupils white instead of black in a sea of pearl irises. Despite the oddness of the situation, Harry didn't feel intimidated or scared. Instead, he felt rather calm. She appraised Harry slowly, hopping to sit on Hermione's overflowing desk daintily and kicking bare feet back and forth through the air.

"Normally my presence causes great anxiety," the creature told him, the tenor of her voice deeper than a girl's and yet suiting in its ominousness. She rather looked similar to Luna, Harry noted, if Luna had a terrifying, washed-out inhuman older sister.

"I have always thought it silly to start off a situation scared just because I don't know what's happening," Harry replied, placing the two wands down at his feet. "I'm sure Hermione's just put the kettle on, seeing as she always has a kettle boiling at all times, the tea addict. Could I tempt you with a cup?" Harry enquired politely.

"A cup of tea?" The woman repeated, surprised. "How delightful. I've never had tea. I suppose one cup wouldn't hurt."

"Milk and sugar?" Harry prompted.

"Whatever for?" The woman asked.

"The tea," Harry