Harry had a hard time escaping Ginny. After his, quite frankly, terrifying discovery, he didn't want to spend any more time around the woman. Not that he wanted to spend time around her before, but a man could only fake sickness for so long.

He had already informed her that he would be spending the week at Grimmauld Place "because he wanted to finish cleaning it in one sitting," but he had enjoyed watching her face panic for a few seconds before going calm and allowing, once again, to do what he was already planning on doing.

It had been a week since he had found out what his friends and wife had been doing to him and he hadn't been back to Grimmauld Place since. Part of him was avoiding finding out more things that he didn't want to know and another part of him wanted to be far, far, away from his wife.

Even so, he had gotten quite good at pretending to eat the food she gave him. A couple of complicated wandless and wordless charms later and he was able to vanish the food straight from his mouth. Ginny didn't notice a thing and Harry got to spend quite a few galleons on food that he ate behind her back. She definitely didn't need to know that he was throwing away all the meals that she cooked for him to take to Grimmauld Place.

Ever since the effects of the potions started to wear off, Harry felt like he could finally see after many years of being blind. And he was definitely used to being blind. It was crazy how the potions were poisoning his body after the amount of years it had been sitting in his system. If Harry had found out at a later time, he was scared to think about what would have happened to him. That being said, Harry found out the potion was wearing off anyways because of how long he had been taking it. He was still being poisoned, but at least he was literally resisting the potion. That solved his mystery on why he was so annoyed with Ginny lately, though.

However, now, more than ever, he could not stand to even look at the woman. It took everything in him to smile at her, to kiss her. He couldn't do anymore than that. He was glad that they stopped having sex so often recently because he didn't think he would have been able to get it up. Just looking at her made him want to choke. And not because his newfound discovery that he was apparently gay, but also because everytime he looked at her, all he could think about was the things that she did to him.

He felt used most of all. Abused. His body felt dirty. Just thinking about what she did to him made him shudder. He had taken multiple steaming hot showers. He needed to get her off of him. He could feel every touch from the beginning all the way to the peck on his check this morning. It made him want to rip his skin off, just thinking about it.

He needed to stop thinking about it either way.

He had already packed his bags and promised to write to Ginny. He apparated out of there quickly after that. He was worried that Ginny might get suspicious that he was leaving so fast, but he found that he didn't really care.

If she found out, what was she going to do? Divorce him? Good. Report him? He would bring down the entire ministry on her ass. She never understood just how much power he held in his hands. And while he tried to stay out of politics, that didn't mean he was completely ignorant to it. Working in the ministry for over thirty years did that to you.

He found himself, once again, standing before Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. The building that loomed over him looked greater than ever. And it wasn't because he cleaned. It was because he definitely felt like he stepped into a home. His home.

He made his way inside quickly, locking the door behind him, and warding it for measure. He also planned on locking the floo just in case. He didn't want anyone stepping foot in his house. This was his home and he wasn't going to let them tarnish it.

He put away the food he had bought in the kitchen, grinning, knowing that he was going to be here for at least a week. And knowing him, he was going to be able to make up some excuse for staying here. He quickly threw away Ginny's food. Harry felt excited for what he was going to do. He knew he wasn't ready to read the journals just yet, so he planned on doing what he actually told Ginny he was coming here for.

He had only cleaned up to the first floor, not an amazing feat, but he wasn't going near that room anytime soon, so he was moving up to the second floor. With a wave of his hand, music filtered through the air.

Hours passed by while he was cleaning. The music helped distract him and take his mind of what he really didn't want to think about. He took multiple breaks, knowing that he was going to stay there for the week. And by the time it was around noon, Harry had made it to the fourth floor.

This had been the floor that he landed on last week when he had his breakdown. He was glad that this was probably going to be the cleanest floor for him to work on. He cleaned Sirius' room first, ignoring the stabbing pain that he got from just being in there. The room was so Sirius that it hurt and he just had to laugh at the sight of it.

There were multiple muggle posters of half-naked women lining the walls and even the ceiling. Harry was sure that his mother just loved that. He tried taking them down to find that they all had permanent sticking charms on them, similar to the one that held Walburga's portrait up. It had been a while since he laughed that much so he decided to not even try to take them down.

He remembered Sirius staying in this room during his fifth year and it made him want to laugh and cry at the same time. Just thinking about his Sirius sleeping in a room full of half-naked girls made his stomach clench with laughter. Just the thought of it was ridiculous.

He cleaned the bathroom at the top of the stairs before moving on to Regulus' room. This was the room he was most excited about. He never knew Regulus, obviously, but when he had been in there earlier, he had seen many different journals that he was sure were filled to the brim with many things not about him. Harry knew himself better than anyone and he knew his curious nature was going to get the better of himself one day. However, that did not stop him from wanting to take a peak in all those journals.

He thought back to the last time his curiosity got the better of him and thought that maybe he should keep to himself. However, Harry then assured himself that Regulus' journals couldn't possibly be about him so they were definitely going to be way more interesting.

He didn't get to do many interesting things in his life now. After Voldemort's followers were all caught, even work got boring. He liked having new things in his life. It gave him something to do and to look forward to. He had wanted to travel a bit after the war, but with all the things happening, he never got the chance to. Hell, the most he's travelled now was going to foreign countries to deal with escaped prisoners.

However, he never looked too far into Regulus Black so this was definitely new to him. His journals were probably full of his experiences at Hogwarts. Maybe he even talked about Sirius in them. Or even his parents. That one was less likely, but a man could hope.

He went up to the largest shelf against the left-most wall and stared at the journals. He wondered if they were in chronological order or not. With that in mind he grabbed the first book on the shelf. Wanting to get comfortable for when he started to read, Harry magicked his pajamas on with a wave of his hand. He got under the covers and turned on the bedside lamp. He was, all in all, very cozy.

He didn't know why, but he was getting anxious just thinking about the journal. He supposed that maybe since Ginny's journal and Regulus' journal were so alike, his subconscious thought they were the same. He briefly wondered if Ginny had stolen an empty journal from Regulus' room.

He didn't care about any of that, however, and proceeded to open the journal. Because if Harry was anything, he was definitely brave. He could do this. He was surprised that there was nothing on the first page, but had seen Hermione do the same thing occasionally, so he moved on.

This journal is the property of Regulus Arcturus Black.

Harry definitely approved of his medium sized, and neat script. It was definitely going to be a lot easier to read than that mess of journal downstairs. Flipping to the next page he began reading on.

01 September 1970

RAB

As soon as Sirius left on the train to Hogwarts, Mother pulled me aside and told me that since Sirius was gone, I was going to be learning something very important from now on. I already knew what it was, of course. How could I not? Even thinking about Mother trying to teach Sirius this knowledge was laughable. Only I would be trusted with this important knowledge.

Mother and Father probably knew he was never going to want to learn about something as important as the Dark Lord's plans. However, if I had been Sirius, I would have learned about it either way in order to get the upper hand. I guess this shows where Sirius and I are next to each other in terms of IQ.

I'm just excited Mother is gifting me these facts so early on. I thought for sure she was going to wait until I was in Hogwarts. I know that she wants me to be smart - the constant stream of tutors was often proof enough - but I never thought she was going to explain the plans of the Greatest Dark Lord in history to me before I even started at Hogwarts.

It is to be expected of me to know at least some of it before I go to Hogwarts, I assume. I know Mother and Father are raising me to take his mark when the time comes. I cannot wait. This journal's sole purpose will probably be used from now on to explain the Dark Lord's plans in detail so that I, Regulus Black, can never forget what I am signing up for.

For the betterment of the wizarding world.

He quietly shut the journal. Harry could not believe his eyes. What had he just read? Was this book really going to be all about killing muggle-borns and pureblood supremacy. Regulus sounded nothing like Sirius, that was for sure. Weighing in his options on whether or not to read on, Harry decided that he was just going to read, and if it got too graphic he would stop. Simple.

The tattered leather cover stared up at Harry. Harry could tell the book had been well-used. The book looked as if it had been opened up and looked at thousands of times. It smelled just like all of the old books he had read at Hogwarts over the years.

He opened it up once more and turned to the next page. He read on and read on. There were detailed entries from Regulus Black dated all the way up until his death. The entries were fairly harder to read as time seemed to move on for Regulus. Harry read on as Regulus became obsessed with Voldemort's goals before slowly starting to lose hope as Voldemort descended into insanity.

Voldemort's original goals seemed extremely understandable and tolerable as he read, something that surprised him. He didn't know what to think about it. Harry had been told for years that Voldemort fought for pureblood supremacy. For getting rid of muggle-borns and muggles. However, what he was getting from Regulus' writing was that that was a fairly recent development caused by Voldemort's own insanity and inability to see right from wrong, as well as the Light's agenda to push against the dark forces.

There were pages and pages glorifying Voldemort. Glorifying a Voldemort that fought for creature rights. A Voldemort that wanted to bring every magical child into the magical world. A Voldemort that was obsessed with the need to educate young witches and wizards in all magics. Voldemort believed that restricting the kinds of magics children were to learn was harming their society and when a new type of magic was banned, magic weakened.

Harry had always felt that there was something wrong with banning "dark magic." In all of his years as an Auror, seeing different kinds of magics be labeled as dark, broke his heart. There were magics that were banned that Harry could easily achieve with a well placed severing charm. The more and more magic that was banned in Harry's time, the more he questioned the Wizengamot in their ability to judge magic correctly.

Harry knew he was one man, but sometimes he questioned himself and his decision in not joining the Wizengamot. Every time he had thought about it, the more he thought that he wouldn't have been able to make a change.

Most people in the wizarding world today had turned their backs on him multiple times. He never thought that anyone in politics would take him seriously. He just didn't have the right public image for it. Everyone would turn their backs on him sooner or later.

Voldemort's supposed original plans were very interesting to him. He had never read about them before, just blindly trusting Dumbledore's word in him being evil. Harry had never stopped to think about what Voldemort was fighting for behind that. He briefly wondered if there were any books anywhere, noting his goals and accomplishments.

He knew that a lot of his insanity was driven by his fear of death and need to stay alive. Voldemort wanted to stay alive forever and he wanted to live in a world that he thought was correct. He didn't want to live in a 'good' society, he wanted to live in a society of pure magic.

Harry remembered something Voldemort had said to him a long time ago, that he never looked into back then: "There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it." Harry had dismissed it back then, but now Harry saw what he was really trying to say. He was trying to say that he knew what the wizarding world should look like. He was the one that had the ambition and will in order to achieve those ends. And he would achieve those ends no matter what or who got in his way.

Harry awkwardly felt that he could sympathize with Voldemort in that. Harry never thought himself good enough in order to be the wizard to bring wizarding Britain up to what it should be. Harry wished he had the confidence that Voldemort had in wanting to change the world. Harry wished Voldemort had achieved his dreams. He wondered what the world would have been like if he had.

Harry shook his head, not liking where his thoughts were going. He didn't know how he felt about how right Voldemort sounded in the journals. Harry didn't want to miss the old Voldemort, someone who he had never met. The Voldemort that he had never had the pleasure of meeting. Voldemort killed his parents in a war, fighting for what he believed in, but in the end, he was insane.

Voldemort's insanity killed his parents, he thought.

Voldemort's fear of death killed his parents.

Harry wished that he could speak to Voldemort in that moment. In the moment where he was feeling sorry for himself for never fighting to achieve the dreams that he usually hid away in the back of his. Voldemort had always pulled out the best in him, if he was being honest with himself. Harry found that many of Voldemort's dreams were his dreams. He wanted the society that Voldemort tried so hard to create, so bad.

He continued to read all the way to the last entry. He read through every part of Voldemort slowly becoming more insane and insane all the way up to the year before he was born.

The last entry made his breath catch in his throat.

26 September 1979

RAB

I have discovered something about the Dark Lord. I… I cannot even begin to understand what he was thinking when doing this. I knew that he was getting worse and worse as the days went by, but because of this? I cannot follow this man any longer.

I had readily accepted his use of my personal house elf, Kreacher, because I wanted to please my Lord. But what he did was unforgivable. Kreacher told me what he did. He forced him to drink poison that made him want to die and then placed an object inside a bowl.

What Kreacher was describing to me was something that I had only read about in the darkest of texts. He… split his soul in half. He made a horcrux. There is nothing worse than messing with your soul. Tampering with things that should not be tampered with will bring about grave consequences. This is why he is going insane. Magic has rules and he broke them!

I should have noticed. The stories Mother and Father told me about Him do not match up. The splits in his soul have caused his sanity to leave him. I cannot follow an insane man. His goals, his politics, all lost with his sanity because his disastrous attempt at false immortality.

What is worse is that I think he has made more than one. I plan on going to the location that Kreacher was at and retrieving the horcrux. Just thinking about the magic that probably seeps from such an object makes me sick. This goes against the very laws of magic. I will bring Kreacher with me so that he can take the object and destroy it, for I know that I will die from this. Kreacher has not failed me yet. When he destroys it, Voldemort cannot live.

He knew that Regulus hadn't wanted to be a Death Eater near the end of his time, but he never knew why. This information was shocking. Harry, however, understood exactly what Regulus was going through. The frustration, the fear of what was to come. He knew it all too well. He was saddened at how far Voldemort had gone in order to achieve immortality, solely because of how it messed with his original plans.

Harry thought that if Voldemort had stood in front of him today, not insane, just ready to help, he would definitely say yes, with no hesitation.

Harry thought about his parents and all of the other people who died in the war and shook his head. If Voldemort had never gone insane then they would have never died. It wasn't Voldemort's fault that he went insane. There was no way that he knew if he created too many horcruxes he would go insane. There was no way.

Thinking back to the journal, so many of things that Dumbledore and even his friends told him were lies. He supposed that Dumbledore was the one feeding his friends these lies, but that didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

He turns to one of the pages near the end of the book that had a picture taped to the thick yellowy paper. It was a muggle picture of Tom Riddle before he started losing his human features. Next to it was a drawing, which was fairly good, of Voldemort. Of what Voldemort looked like after the resurrection ritual.

Rubbing a finger next to Tom Riddle's old picture, Harry closed the journal with a sigh. He couldn't get over how sad it made him such a great wizard was ruined by his very own fear and loss of humanity.

Harry never got to sleep that night.

He just couldn't!

There were so many journals on that shelf and he couldn't stop until he had finished all of them. Not all of them had been about Voldemort, but he did get to hear a bit more about Sirius. Not much, but enough.

A lot of the journals were filled with notes from classes that Regulus had taken at Hogwarts. Harry found the way he described everything just fascinating. With the way he wrote, it made Harry just want to learn more. It worked more than Hermione could ever convince him to study.

And although Harry found himself being embarrassed quite a bit when he had to literally reference first year textbooks because he had forgotten about something, Harry found that he was learning a lot.

He was particularly taken with his notes on potions. His writing was more enticing than the Half-Blood Prince and actually made him want to make potions. He laughed, wondering what Professor Snape would say if he saw him now: reading over potions notes and through potion textbooks like a first year muggle born.

All in all, he just found himself wanting to relearn everything at Hogwarts. It seemed like an easy task, but Harry was sure he had forgotten most small things.

Regulus had mentioned in his writings, the Black Family Library and Harry was definitely going to be in and out of that room for the rest of the week. Once he found it, however. Harry had been all over Grimmauld Place looking for it, even on the first floor, and he still hadn't found it. He was getting quite desperate and thought that he might just have to unfreeze the portraits in the place in order to ask them where it was.

And by might, he meant right now.

He tripped over himself getting out of the comfortable bed, switching his clothes quickly. The journal that he needed to reference was in his hands, just in case. He smoothed his hand over his hair before heading out into the hall. He pointed his wand at the portraits and muttered the spell to unfreeze them.

There wasn't much noise coming from them as they hadn't noticed that he had unfrozen them. However, a dark haired man was staring right at him. Harry walked toward him with the intent on asking him where the library was at.

"Hello," he glanced at the name plaque that was screwed to the frame, "Mr. Black." Orion Black to be precise. The man glared at him sticking his nose up a bit higher.

"Mr… Potter. What a pleasure. " he said sarcastically. Harry had the audacity to look sheepish. He knew that the portraits probably hated being silenced, even when there was no one around.

"Hello," he repeated, "I was just wondering if you could point me to the library?"

Orion rolled his eyes as if he had just asked the stupidest question on earth. And if Harry was being honest with himself, he felt like the stupidest person on earth in that moment. He belatedly wondered if the Library was in a different house and he had just read over that part.

"And why do you need to know that information, Mr. Potter?"

"Oh! I was just looking to reference a few things Regulus mentioned in his journals." Harry lifted the journal to emphasize his point. Orion's eyes immediately softened before returning to their original state. It was in an instant and Harry barely caught it himself.

"May I ask which books you are referencing? Just for curiosity sake." Harry briefly flipped to the page he bookmarked. He didn't see a reason not to explain himself.

"Secrets of the Darkest Art and Magick Moste Evile, " he said, simply. Orion's eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Those are some very… dark texts, Mr. Potter. Are you sure you want to read those particular ones," he asked, carefully. Harry didn't find his questions offensive in the least, so he just smiled.

"Yes," his smile got larger, "I've actually been reading a lot about the Dark Lord and his rise to power. Regulus references these specific books and I just have to read them!" Harry could tell Orion was surprised by his excitement. However, Harry didn't care. He felt like a little kid in a toy store when it came to the Dark Lord right now. He continued when Orion didn't say anything. "I find the topic to be… fascinating. His goals and politics before he went insane were just…" He was cut off.

"Intoxicating," Orion swiftly interrupted, a new look appearing in his eyes. Harry breathed in.

"Yes, actually." Orion smirked, and pointed to the wall next to him.

"You must say the Black motto in front of this wall. With the right intent and magic, the Black Family Library will appear," he paused when Harry's eyes widened in excitement. "However, Mr. Potter. If you ever have any… questions about His plans," he paused again. "I will be here. I did, afterall, go to school with him."

And with that, Orion sat back in his portrait, supposedly finished with speaking with Harry. Harry didn't mind, however, because he could feel a sense of hope fill in his chest for whatever reason. He just wanted to know more and more about Tom. He wanted to know everything.

After finding the Library with the help of Orion Black, Harry was in Heaven. He found Secrets of the Darkest Art and Magick Moste Evile, fairly quickly. He thought in the middle of searching for them that they might not be there considering both copies had only been seen in Hogwarts Restricted Section, but kept searching. The library was something that Harry had never seen before. He had to remind himself multiple times to not look at the other books before he got the books he came for because he knew he would find himself in a mountain of books to read with no way out.

He found it funny that he was having the best time of his life in a library of all things. He briefly considered telling Hermione about his new study habits but quickly reminded himself that Hermione wasn't actually his friend.

He couldn't get over how he trusted his friends with his whole life, and they did this to him. He wondered when it all started. When his friends, or even Dumbledore started to control his life like he was their puppet and they were the puppeteer. He shook his head away from the dark thoughts.

The first book he had started reading was Magick Moste Evile. He was fairly disappointed that there was only a small sentence talking about Horcruxes, but he assumed that they were talked about more in the next book.

Talked about more in the next book, they were. Harry only skimmed over the sections of the book that talked about other evil magics, wanting only to find the horcrux section. Although he skimmed through the other sections, he understood why Hermione thought it was an awful book with the kinds of magic it talked about.

The horcrux section was where it got interesting. There were pages upon pages talking about what a horcrux was and what it did to a person. Harry assumed that Tom skipped over most of the consequences because he couldn't understand why someone would ask for that. He definitely didn't realize that dying would cause his soul to break apart and land itself in the head of his enemy.

One thing that caught Harry's interest, however, was the fact that the soul was able to be fixed with remorse. It also said that it could be an extremely painful event, which Harry understood fully. He couldn't imagine the kind of pain that it took to tear his soul apart, nevermind stitching it back together again.

After reading through the section a few times, Harry finally understood what Tom did wrong. He remembered that Tom had originally gone to Professor Slughorn about the theory of multiple horcruxes, and he remembered the joy on his face when his theories were practically confirmed. However, what Tom didn't think about was the tiny fact that a single horcrux split the soul, directly in half.

Creating his first horcrux would have been fine, if he had stopped there. Creating his second horcrux, he was already at fifty percent of a soul. Doing the ritual to split his soul in half once more left Tom with only 25 percent of a soul. Harry could imagine that after his second horcrux, that was where he started going insane.

It was right there in a first-year text book that everyone was required to have. Magical Theory. He didn't know if the textbook was released before Tom's time, but that didn't change the fact. Tom was essentially going against the first fundamental law of magic. Regulus had said something about it in his last journal entry.

Tampering with things that should not be tampered with will bring about grave consequences. This is why he is going insane. Magic has rules and he broke them!

It was really sad that Tom, in this desperate attempt at making sure that he survived, he doomed himself. He sought to be immortal and live, but attempting to push magic to its limits, he broke himself. He was barely human in the end and Harry just couldn't imagine the pain that Tom must have gone through. By the end, Tom's mind was gone, just desolate.

Harry wondered if Tom would have even been able to save himself. Would he even be able to feel remorse in such an inhuman state? Would he even be able to feel anything besides desire to live, to fight, to win?

In his last moments of life, was he in agony, not at the spells being cast at him, not at being torn apart, but with the knowledge that he was going to die for real this time? He was going to die and he could never return. He would forever be stuck in limbo, not being to come back, not being able to move on.

Did he think about how his dreams would never be able to come to life and it was all his fault ?

Harry didn't know. He didn't want to know. He was just struck with this insatiable need and want to fix something that was already gone. He wanted to go back and fix what he did. He wanted to save Tom. Save him from himself.

Harry wanted to go back.

Harry knew that he couldn't go back and that made him extremely sad. He thought that if there had just been some form of a ritual or spell that replicated remorse then maybe Tom would have been able to be fixed and helped, not murdered.

He wondered if such a spell existed, because if it didn't, Harry knew what he was going to be doing with his time from then on.

There was no way that Harry could ever let a situation like that happen again and if that meant creating a brand new spell from scratch that he couldn't use of the only person that he thought truly needed it, then so be it.

Tom had a terrible life and an even more terrible ending and Harry didn't like to think about how he had made the man's life even worse. Just with his presence, Tom was sent into a frenzy, his need to survive surfacing at every encounter. Dumbledore definitely didn't help.

Dumbledore had never stopped to think that maybe instead of Tom being a born evil child, that he needed care. Dumbledore disliked Tom from the beginning for no good reason. Harry didn't think that he could actually forgive Dumbledore for that.

Harry had thought that he could forgive Dumbledore for leaving him on the doorsteps of the Dursley's, but after thinking about it for a while, Harry knew that he could have ended up like Tom. And to Harry that was a punishment that Harry would never wish on anyone. Tom lived a life of nothing but pain. He was just a child when it all started.

Harry was definitely going to create that spell if it was the last thing he did.

He wanted, no needed there to be a way for things like this to never happen, ever again.