Yosh! This is my entry for the 30k-word contest on Third Floor Corridor. I don't think it'll be the best one there, but I'm hoping to win the Most Death's award. . This story actually has a plot, and if I can't get the rest of it finished by October 31st, I'll still be working on it for you guys. I like this one. It has that strange sense of humor that I find particularly funny -though many won't get it. (shrugs) Oh well, not my problem.

DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter belongs to JKRowling and whoever else she allows to play with her creations. I do not have her permission, but I am not making any profit off this fic, so please don't sue me.

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.
– Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

"Men are mad most of their lives; few live sane, fewer die so. … The acts of people are baffling unless we realize that their wits are disordered. Man is driven to justice by his lunacy."

- Edward Dahlberg

To Become a Dark Lord

Part 1: The Most Ancient and Noble House of Black

By: Ceris Malfoy

Harry Potter was not exactly what one would consider a normal guy. A normal male, surrounded by the mementos of his failure might get angry, or slip into depression. That normal male would look back and discover each and every single individual thing that could have been done differently. Each and every detail would be picked over, until all he could see were failures and betrayals. He would destroy himself in anger and/or grief.

But Harry James Potter was not normal.

After the Department of Mysteries fiasco, after he had shred Dumbledore's office, Harry had become numb. He watched everyone around him crying (over Cedric, not him; never him). He watched them laughing (over the end of yet another year, not with him or to him; never him). He watched them spend as much time as possible with their friends (not with him though; never him). He watched them in their general ignorance and finally grasped what the Dursleys, in their own bigoted, abusive way, had been trying to tell him for years.

He was different.

Ron and Hermione were no comfort to him. They didn't understand what it was like. They would never understand. He was a marked man, for better or for worse. He was different, and every single student with their too-loud conversation, accusing stares, and whispered insults knew it.

He drifted further and further away from them all –sometimes hiding outright when it was called for. And he waited to go back to the Hell that was the Dursleys.

Harry had been about to board the Hogwarts Express when one of the Order members pulled him aside. He would never be able to remember the name or the face of who told him the news. He had been in too much shock (and unbearable joy) at the time to really bother; the Dursleys were dead.

Dead. Lifeless. Gone. Dead.

Apparently Voldemort had been more than slightly irate that Harry had screwed yet another one of his brilliant plans (as if) and retaliated in the only way he knew how to: slaughtering Harry's relatives. Harry supposed that this was supposed to make him feel absolutely wretched, or at the very least mildly guilty. It was funny, really, all he actually wanted to do was start jumping up and down screaming in disbelieving happiness.

But anyway.

He had been packed up and shipped off to Headquarters (which apparently he now owned, but did anyone bother to tell him that?) and left there to his own devices for the rest of the summer. The first week was blurry. He remembered nothing but alternate fits of fury and joy. Half the house (mostly the furniture) was in ruins; the other half was absolutely spotless.

And then, one avidly curious morning, he had gotten it into his head to start exploring the dank, dark, and decrepit old house. He had stayed to familiar territory for the most part – it wouldn't do to end up dead from a doxy bite – when he had seen the corridor. There was nothing particularly odd about it. It was just a simple hallway with doors on either side in even intervals. The doors were not even all that interesting – just as black and grimy as the rest of the house with silver doorknobs. But….

But.

But the floor was almost spotless; just a thin layer of dust. But one of the doors appeared to have been slammed repeatedly -it was splintering at the edges. But one of the doorknobs was gold. Harry had crept along the hallway, feeling guilty and strange like he wasn't supposed to be here. He reached the door, grasped the knob, and opened it.

Tears had lept to his eyes. He had discovered Sirius' room; a room that at first glance appeared to be just as dank and hopeless as the rest of the house. On the second, it was oddly fragmented. Bright posters of various QWhatuidditch teams (although most were posters of last year's Gryffindor Quidditch team) plastered on rotting walls with pealing green-black wall paper. A cracked ceiling with sections missing (Harry saw that a bathroom was one floor above) that had muggle glow-in-the-dark stars pasted on it. Splintered furniture carved with grotesque-looking serpents covered with Gryffindor tribute. Sections of the room were neat and tidy, and others were decidedly not.

Harry had walked into the room, sat down in the center on the floor, and simply stared fixedly at absolutely nothing. He did this every day, without fail, for anywhere between 1 to 10 hours. Some days he would think, some days he would plan, and some days (the worst days) he would remember. He would remember Sirius, and everything that man was to him. Freedom. Hope. Family. Home.

A month passed, perhaps two (maybe more; he could no longer be sure), and he still came up here. Hid in Sirius' room with Sirius' things. He never touched. Could not touch anything, not yet, maybe not ever. And over this time came to an understanding about himself and about his godfather's death. He felt at peace.

Whenever he wasn't in Sirius' room, he would go back to exploring his new property. He felt wrong for being here, felt like he was intruding on something he couldn't possibly understand. So he passed through the hallways like a ghost, silent and careful movements taking care to not disturb even the dust.

It was on one of the weeks before he was to be shipped back off to Hogwarts that Harry had wandered into the library. It was old and dusty and obviously no one had wandered in here for quite some time – he wouldn't even have wandered in here had he not been so bored. He had not gotten very far when a small, brutally shredded booklet caught his eyes. He picked it up, carefully pieced it back together, and read.

Nothing would ever be the same after that.

So? What did you think? RnR!