Chapter 2: Harry Potter and The Dimensional Portal
Chapter : 2
1
"Dey're all back dere," said Neville. "A brain addacked Ron, bud I dink he's all righd. And Herbione's unconscious, bud we could feel a bulse―"
There was a loud bang and a yell from behind the dais. Sirius saw an order member, yelling in pain, hit the ground. Bellatrix LeStrange turned tail and ran as Dumbledore whipped around. He aimed a spell at her, but she deflected it. She was halfway up the steps now leading back out of the Department.
With a sudden bolt of fury flooding his system, Sirius didn't even realise he was moving.
"Sirius ― no!" cried Lupin, but Sirius didn't even slow down. He chased after the mad bitch.
"SHE KILLED HARRY!" bellowed Sirius. "SHE KILLED HIM ― I'LL KILL HER!"
And he was off, scrambling up the stone benches. People were shouting behind him, but he did not care. The hem of Bellatrix's robes whipped out of sight ahead and they were in a room where large glass tanks, but one, had smashed andthings on the ground that looked like a cross between a brain and a squid were scattered about on the floor.
She aimed a curse over her shoulder. The tank rose into the air and tipped. Sirius was deluged in the foul-smelling potion within. The brains slipped and slid over him and began spinning their long, coloured tentacles, but he shouted, "Depulso!" and they flew into the air away from him. Nimbly, he dodged the rest of the potion on the floor and ran on toward the door. He leapt over a young blonde-haired student witch, who was groaning on the floor, past Ginny, who said, "Hey!... What?" past Ron, who giggled feebly, and Hermione, who was still unconscious. He wrenched open the door into the circular black hall and saw Bellatrix disappearing through a door on the other side of the room. Beyond her was the corridor leading back to the lifts.
Determinedly, he chased after her; but she had slammed the door behind her and the walls had begun to rotate again. Just as when he and the other members of the Order desperately raced into the Department to rescue his godson and his friends, he was surrounded by streaks of blue light from the whirling candelabra.
"Where's the exit?" he shouted desperately, as the wall rumbled to a halt again. "Where's the way out?"
The room seemed to have been waiting for him to ask. The door right behind him flew open, and the corridor toward the lifts stretched ahead of him, torch-lit and empty. He ran.
He knew this was a race of his trying to catch his mad bitch of a cousin before she reached the atrium and her needing to reach the atrium to escape; whether by portkey, apparation or the floos therein.
He could hear a lift clattering ahead of him. He sprinted up the passageway, swung around the corner and slammed his fist onto the button to call a second lift. It jangled and banged lower and lower; the grilles slid open and Sirius dashed inside, now jabbing the button marked Atrium. The doors slid shut and he was rising.
Moments later, he forced his way out of the lift before the grilles were fully open and looked around. Bellatrix was almost at the telephone lift at the other end of the hall, but she looked back as he sprinted toward her and aimed another spell at him. He dodged behind the Fountain of Magical Brethren; the spell zoomed past him and hit the wrought gold gates at the other end of the Atrium and they rang like bells.
In order to catch his breath, he paused for a few moments behind the fountain.
"Come out, come out, dear cousin!" she called. Her voice echoed off the polished wooden floors. "What did you come after me for, then? I thought you were here to avenge wee baby Potter!"
"I am!" he called, stepping back out.
"Aaaaaah... did you love him, dear cousin?"
Hatred rose in Sirius such as he had never known before. Without any incantation he simply jabbed his wand forward twice in quick succession. The first spell cast was a shield breaker; the second was a bone shatterer.
Bellatrix screamed. The shield breaker had done its job against the shield she'd immediately erected before her, ripping it away and allowing the next to get through her defences and hit her. The follow-up bone breaker slammed into her and knocked her off her feet. But she did not shriek with pain. Immediately, she jumped to her feet again, breathless, no longer laughing and silently cast a dark curse back. Sirius simply side-stepped it, which allowed it to hit the head of the handsome wizard of the fountain. The head was blown off and landed twenty feet away, gouging long scratches into the wooden floor.
Sirius had been edging around the fountain on the other side. She screamed, "Crucio!" and he was forced to duck behind the fountain as the centaur's arm, holding its bow, spun off and landed with a crash on the floor a short distance from the golden wizard's head.
"You cannot win against me!" she cried. He could hear her moving to the right, trying to get a clear shot of him. He backed around the statue away from her, crouching behind the centaur's legs, his head level with the house-elf's. "I was and am the Dark Lord's most loyal servant," she called. "I learned the Dark Arts from him and I know spells of such power that you can never hope to compete―"
Sirius had edged right around to where the goblin stood beaming up at the now headless wizard and taken aim at her back as she peered around the fountain for him - and cast yet another bone breaker.
She reacted so fast he barely had time to duck. "Protego!"
The jet of red light, his own spell, bounced back at him. He was forced to duck and one of the goblin's ears went flying across the room.
"Sirius, I am going to give you one chance!" shouted Bellatrix.
Sirius laughed again because he knew it would incense her. Stepping out from behind the one-eared goblin he immediately had to duck back as she sent another jet of green light flying at him.
"Missed!" he shouted. "And there's nothing to summon!"
"No!" she screamed. "MASTER, I TRIED, I TRIED - DO NOT PUNISH ME―"
"Don't waste your breath!" he yelled back. "He can't hear you from here!"
"Can't I, Lord Black?" called a high, cold voice.
Sirius quickly spun to the voice.
Tall, thin and black-hooded, his terrible snakelike face white and gaunt, his scarlet, slit-pupilled eyes staring ... Lord Voldemort had appeared in the middle of the hall, his wand pointing at Sirius.
"So you lot smashed my prophecy?" said Voldemort softly, staring at Sirius with those pitiless red eyes. "No, Bella, he is not lying. I see the truth looking at me from within his worthless mind. Months of preparation, months of effort ... and my Death Eaters have let Harry Potter thwart me again..."
"Master, I am sorry, I knew not, I was fighting the Animagus Black!" sobbed Bellatrix, flinging herself down at Voldemort's feet as he paced slowly nearer. "Master, you should know―"
"Be quiet, Bella," said Voldemort dangerously. "I shall deal with you in a moment. Do you think I have entered the Ministry of Magic to hear your snivelling apologies?"
"But Master... he is here! He is below―"
Voldemort paid no attention.
"I have nothing more to say to you, Lord Black," he said quietly. "You could have joined me. Your blood is pure and would have been easily welcomed into my ranks. AVADA―!"
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