Disclaimer: I own none of this, The HP universe and character was created by JKR.

"Well, I plan on adopting Harry and he is going to live with me."

"I'm not sure that's a great idea Sirius, there are strong protective wards on Privet Drive that keep Harry and his relatives safe from the outside world…" Dumbledore sighed. He needs to keep Harry protected. "There are still followers of Voldemort out there who would love nothing less than to get revenge for their fallen master."

"I have heard about these so called Blood Wards that are set up on the house. I know the Black library personally has a few books, but I've never read them of course. They keep anyone with ill intent out, they are based on Harry's emotions, and because of that they are really weak."

"Yes that may be true, but I must insist…" Dumbledore insisted. "Surely his relatives aren't that bad."

"I watched them during the summer. While the wards may protect Harry from outside harm, it does nothing to prevent what happens inside. There is no love for Harry in there. They treat him like dirt; they use him like a house elf. He is both physically and emotionally abused, and being his godfather I can't allow that." Sirius said in a tone of finality.

Dumbledore sighed in defeat. He truly doesn't know what goes on in the house. He only has a few monitors set up to indicate Harry's general health, a Dark Mark detector ward, and a detector that indicates the blood ward strength, which he knows it is not as strong as it could be. "Very well, I concede, what do you suggest?"

"If I may sir?" Harry spoke up. "Knowing that my Godfather is free and has a home to offer, I do not consider the Dursleys to be my home anymore, and I hope I will never have to see them again. I lived in a cupboard for the first 10 years of my life for Merlin's sake, there is no love in that house, and there never was, and there will certainly be no love lost if we never see each other again." As soon as he said that one of Dumbledore's instruments started smoking.

Dumbledore rubbed the bridge of his nose as he looked at the instrument. "Well it looks like the wards fell as soon as you said that you don't consider that your home anymore. Very well I see that the best option would be for Sirius to take you in. Which property are you going to use. Maybe I can help ward it?"

"Well I am thinking of getting a new place built, to symbolize the start of our new lives, and start with a clean slate. Meanwhile, I guess we will live in my manor at Grimmauld Place for a few weeks until our new house gets built." Sirius offered. He didn't say "I don't want you near my house," out loud. He did get him a trial after all, but the fact that Dumbledore is partly responsible for Azkaban stint in the first place does create for some animosity.

Harry looked excited at the prospect of having a new house, living with his godfather, and probably Lupin also.

"I plan on gaining some honor back to the Black name. The Ancient and Most Noble House of Black has been tainted by the likes of Narcissa and Bellatrix, I will probably disown them from the family and invite the Tonks back in." After seeing Harry's blank look he added "My mother disowned them and me from the family, but since I am the last male I am the head of the house I have control of everything." He said with a smile. "The previous head, Arcturus, died about 3 years ago, and it fell to me. Of course I didn't know about it in prison so as I couldn't feel the magic signs through the wards, so the house was left in limbo for the past 3 years."

Dumbledore got stood up. "Alas, I'm sorry to have to cut this meeting short but there is one more thing I have to say before I have to go. At the trial today I noticed something peculiar, the Dark Mark on Peter's arm, it was slightly darker, almost imperceptibly darker. "

"I noticed it too professor." Harry offered.

"Yes well, this can only mean one thing, Voldemort is on the rise, it can only mean that he is out of his spirit form, but anything thing else beyond that is a mystery. I think I will floo call Severus momentarily". Dumbledore grabbed some powder and threw it into the fireplace, and reappeared 30 seconds later.

"Ah yes, it is as I feared, it looks like something big is going to happen in the upcoming years, but it has only just started. I can only say to you Harry that you must keep your wits about you. Help is always available, but I can't explain everything yet, I myself don't have all the answers…yet." Dumbledore said mysteriously.

"I guess I can't just have a quiet year can I, huh? First year it was Quirrell being possessed by Voldemort. Next year it was him possessing a diary. Then it was my parent's betrayer. And now it looks like He is back at it again. That about sum it up?"

Dumbledore nodded his head and sighed for the tenth time that night. "I must bid you goodbye for now. How about you give Sirius a proper tour of the castle, I'm sure he hasn't seen it properly in a long time. There is only a few more days left of the term, I hope you enjoy yourself."

Sirius and Harry started walking the halls, Sirius was doing most of the talking, and mostly about past stunts the Marauders pulled. They were walking past the girls bathroom on the second floor when Harry stopped and motioned Sirius to follow him in. Sirius just lifted an eyebrow and entered without saying anything.

Harry walked up to one of the sinks and hissed "open" in parseltongue,. He then got an idea and hissed "stairs".

"Welcome to the chamber of secrets." Sirius jaw dropped.

"Is it safe?" Sirius said peering down the down the pitch black hole.

"Only one way to find out" Harry just grinned and started walking down.

"I haven't been down here in almost a year. I would like to explore it before the term is over, see if there is anything interesting. I know the basilisk could probably be harvested for parts, but other than that there must be rooms or something down here." Sirius didn't say anything but continued walking down the stairs. Eventually they emerged and Sirius' jaw flapped opened. They walked past the shed basilisk skin.

They walked up to the doors, a quick hiss of "open" and they slowly parted. The entered and Sirius finally spoke up with just "wow". The 60 foot basilisk was still there, as expected, and it still looked as fresh as the day it was killed.

They both started examining the walls not saying anything until they came to the statue of Salazar Slytherin. Harry, recalling back the password to open it, hissed out "speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four". The mouth on the statue opened and they walked in, wands lit. The tunnel looked like it went straight back for many hundreds of feet. He could faintly see light all the way at the end. They started walking and a few dozen feet down the way was a door. They entered.

The door led to another passageway that was a few dozen feet long, at the end was a portrait, who Harry guessed was of Salazar Slytherin himself. He walked up to the portrait and it immediately woke up and gave a world class sneer that Snape would be envious of.

"Well what do we have here? You certainly don't look like that arrogant prick Tom… Tell me boy what you seek!"

"I'm sorry sir" Harry stammered out, then he hissed "I only seek knowledge to rid the world of the evil known as Lord Voldemort, once and for all!"

"Ah another speaker" Salazar smiled and hissed back at the same time. "You have noble intentions, yet you have my gift. Tell me how a Gryffindor such as yourself has my gift."

"Well I'm not exactly sure how I have the gift. I'm sure Headmaster Dumbledore knows but he hasn't told me, but if I were to venture a guess I would say Voldemort unintentionally gave me the gift when his killing curse rebounded off me and hit him when I was a baby. As far as I know I'm not related to you in anyway, but if my suspicions are correct I am probably related to Gryffindor. Also the sorting hat did want sort me into Slytherin but I asked it not to, because by that time I had run into some bad eggs from your house and they disgusted me. I don't know too much about the other members of the house, but the most prominent members are the most repulsive and I'm afraid that everyone thinks that the whole house is the same. The Head of the house certainly doesn't make the job of liking them any easier."

"How curious. You say that you survived the killing curse as an infant. That is simply unheard of. There must have been some outside force. If what you say about Voldemort still alive, then you are not the only person to survive the killing curse."

"I haven't thought of it like that." Harry said.

"There are a few ways that a man as dark and evil as Voldemort can survive the killing curse, but that is neither here nor there. I can, however, say that the method that you survived with, and the method he survived with, are different."

"Dumbledore always told me that it was my mother's love that protected me." Harry said with a hint of suspicion.

"Well if that were the case surely there would have been other people in a similar situation who have survived the curse, but I have heard of no such thing. I think Dumbledore is just using it as an excuse to keep you under his wing."

Sirius just looked upon the two with a bemused expression on his face, not able to understand any of the hissing that has been going on for the past 10 minutes. "So…care to fill me in on your jovial discussions?"

"So what exactly are you guarding behind your portrait?" Harry said in English this time.

"Well there are my personal chambers, my library, my training room, a sitting room, a bathroom, and a research and potions lab. I will let you in because I can sense your pure intentions, unlike Tom. I did not let him in when he was here. He wanted to use my knowledge to "cleanse the world" as he put it. Regardless he still wrought havoc to the country without my knowledge, but I fear what more he could of done with it. Inside the library you will find some of the most dangerous spells ever created, many of them by myself. I do not need to tell you to be careful. But I will tell you to follow your heart, your intentions are what make a person, and your intentions are what separate the good from evil. You are the first person to enter my chambers since I last did over 1000 years ago, I hope you make good use of it. "

"Thank you I will." Harry said sincerely.

Salazar nodded once and the portrait opened up to reveal a stunning room. There was elegant furniture that was still stylish 1000 years after it was made. There was a lot of green and silver, along with a lot of gold, and of course a snake motif. Harry walked into the next room, which happened to be the bedroom. There was a large bed, and a large fireplace, to go along with the elegance of the room. Harry thought it was quite a romantic setup in the room. He was also thinking of the possibilities with girls and the room, "Sirius must be rubbing off on me already" he said to himself. Attached to the room was the bathroom. There was a large tub in it that Harry thought could hold 8 people.

As they were exiting the room Sirius spoke up with a mischievous smile "So pup, and special girls in your life you plan on taking down here?"

Harry stammered for a moment and blinked a few times before answering. "Er, not really, no. There's not too many choices to be honest with you."

"Well I'm sure any sensible you man like yourself has a rundown on the school." Sirius said with a grin.

"Well…Hermione is like a sister to me. Parvati and Lavender are too giggly even by girl standards. Ginny is off limits." Harry was counting off his fingers as if reciting a list. "Susan Bones is okay, Hannah Abbot is going to be quite the looker in a few years and they are both nice. Lets see, Ravenclaw. Padma is nice, and is quiet unlike her twin. Su Li is the shyest person in the school, and probably smarter than Hermione. I don't know much about Lisa or Mandy, not even their last names." Harry laughed. He would never of thought he would be here in this situation, talking about girls with Sirius in a dank chamber deep under the castle. Yet Sirius was a well known ladies man, and then again, Harry never thought he would be living with him in the future either. "I know there are four girls in my year in Slytherin. Pansy and Millicent are part of Draco's group, and I wouldn't be caught anywhere near them. I don't know the names of the other two, other than the fact that they are not part of the normal snake gang."

Sirius had a smile on his face while he listened to Harry, just glad that he got him to open up a little bit. "Haha, taking after me rather than your father, I'm proud of you pup. Your dad only had eyes for your mom every since the first year, not to say that he didn't expand his interests. Of course he did eventually get the girl of his dreams though. I, on the other hand, have 12 years of solitude to make up for."

They proceeded to the next room, which was the training room. There are targets lining the far wall. They all look to be made out of some sort of metal. He would have to test them out later. He checked out the next room which had a bunch of granite tables set up. There were also a lot of cauldrons set up and rack upon rack of potion ingredients. Harry was sure there are probably a lot of rare ingredients that have been preserved for a millennium, but he was damned if he was going to make any headway in them, with all of his 3 years of potion experiences with Snape. He would probably have to look up some books to help him with the ingredients though. Damned if he knew what a ground up brain stalk of a quintaped is used for.

The next room was the room Harry has been waiting for. Harry is not the type of person to lock himself up in a library for hours like Hermione, but with this wealth of information that just might change. Even Sirius was impressed with the types of books here. He said "The Black family library is quite impressive, even if it is largely dark, but it doesn't hold a candle to this."

There weren't a lot of books per se, but the fact that they were all over 1000 years old was what made it impressive. There were books on every subject you could think of, and some on subjects you couldn't. There were books written by Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, and of course Salazar himself, not to mention dozens of his personal journals. He also saw dozens of books written in parseltongue, and what the books called "parselmagic", which he never heard of before, but guessed it was no different than spells in any other language. He knew these books would definitely give him a huge advantage over his opponents in the future. Harry immediately set a dozen of the parseltongue books out.

He started scanning the shelves again and was surprised to see a few books by Merlin himself. He took out a book simply named "Theory of Magic" The other books by Merlin were simply way above his level at the present time. Continuing down the rows he saw books on transfiguration, and pulled one out on animagi, which made Sirius smile. He came across many spell books on charms, jinxes, hexes, curses, and the defenses against them, including counters and battle tactics, and took a few out, including what he surmised would be categorized as a beginners book on the dark arts. He imagined back during the times of the founders, magic wasn't categorized as light and dark yet, there was just good and evil deeds. He figured he would have to go through the library with an open mind if he was to learn anything at all.

He saw many potent potion books that would make Snape trade his own body parts for. He took one on basic ingredient theory, which is just to say how ingredients react with each other. Quickly looking through the book Harry quickly learned more about potions in 10 minutes than he did with Snape in 3 years. "If only he taught us this from the beginning the class wouldn't suck so much" he thought to himself. He took a few more of the easier books, and a really advanced one that he hoped to bribe Snape with sometime in the future.

He saw a lot of books on topics that he knew he didn't have enough understanding for yet. He saw books on topics such as blood magic, warding, runes, arithmancy, spell crafting, wand crafting, mind magic, elemental magic, just to name some of the first ones he saw. And of course he saw tons of books that had the word "Advanced" in the title so he skipped over all of those. Harry actually took a book on elemental magic and wand crafting. And on second thought he took out a book on runes and arithmancy thinking ahead that he might try to get into those classes for his fourth year, instead of fluff classes like magical creatures and divination.

Finally satisfied that he had enough books, probably around 25, he shrunk them down and put them in bag. He noticed that even Sirius grabbed a few books, but Harry thought better than asking them what they were, knowing Sirius they were probably sex magic or some such thing, but you never know with him.

Looking back at the library, he would estimate that half of the books were unreadable, in different languages and lost dialects. Some he could learn, others probably not. He was able to identify that quite a few were in Greek and Latin, the latter of which is what a lot of modern spell incantations are in. Greek also has it uses in classes like ancient runes, so Harry might be getting some exposure to it in the future. He was thinking of just learning the languages outright, as the books would surely hold magic that has been lost to the world for a long time. He also saw a few dozen books that looked parseltongue in nature, but he surmised they were in other animal languages. Thankfully a lot of the books had notes written in the margins, presumably written by Salazar as they were in antiquated English. He might just be able to scrap some knowledge out of the foreign books if he could follow the wand diagrams and effect pictures. There were also books in other modern languages like French, Italian, and German, but the majority were probably just copies of each other.

He further noted that the vast majority of the English books were very advanced, and he would probably not get to much use out of them yet. However if he were to estimate, he would guess that about 10% of the library he could get any immediate use out of, and that was about 1000 books. 1000 books is a large number, but there is bound to be multiple copies of books, and repeated information across them.

They exited Salazar's chamber and decided to follow the tunnel to the end to see where it led. They must have walked a mile before they emerged into the forbidden forest.

"This must be how the basilisk got out to hunt." Harry thought out loud.

"I imagine so. We could probably come back here during the summer. This has got to be past the apparition wards." Sirius responded.

Harry nodded. "Probably a good idea to return all the books here when we are done with them too, wouldn't want to leave them in the wrong hands."

They decided to head back up in to the castle. It was near dinner time, and Sirius decided he was going to leave that night to start working out the details of having a castle built with his ministry compensation.

A/N I tried to show that while the library is vast, only a small portion is actually usable. The chamber of secrets tends to get cliché, but there's only so much you can do when everything has been done already.