Harry Potter and The Dimensional Portal

Chapter : 3

That was the trigger; at least, the first two syllables.

While on the run for the past three years, Sirius Black had not been idle for that whole time. Due to the ravages of being a prisoner for eleven plus years in the wizarding prison, Azkaban, for the first year he was pretty much an idiot. It took the entire first year, plus more, just to get his head back on straight.

After the first year he headed for the Island of Black in the tropics. However, it wasn't until then he realised he had mental problems. That year on the island and under secret specialist care by healers, once he realised just how mentally mauled he truly was and organised them, beat back most of those physical and mental ravages of which he'd been suffering.

On returning to wizarding Britain approximately twelve months ago, he hadn't been letting the 'potion simmer away'.

Dumbledore had approached him on his immediate return and asked him to provide a property where the newly-reformed Order of the Phoenix could call 'Headquarters' and meet. Sirius had offered his childhood home and forced Dumbledore to promise his godson, Harry, would get to spend the summer with him. It was the only reason Sirius acceded to Dumbledore's firm request to open his home to them.

However, when Harry returned to stay with the Dursleys directly from the Hogwarts Express, Sirius confronted the old man and demanded to know where the boy was. Dumbledore had told him that Harry had returned to the Dursleys 'to ensure the blood wards were re-powered before he would come to Grimmauld Place'. Dumbledore had made it seem that Harry had volunteered to return to the Dursleys to accomplish that.

Even then, Harry was only brought to Grimmauld Place because the boy had been attacked by Dementors on the second of August. And it wasn't until Harry arrived at Grimmauld that Sirius discovered it wasn't Harry's choice he be at Privet Drive, either. He'd been forced back there by Dumbledore.

Oh, Sirius had let the old man verbally 'have it' for that.

However, Dumbledore just stood there with that overly calm and pleasant façade and let Sirius vent. Once Sirius had wound up, or during pauses of ranting, Dumbledore calmly returned, "Harry needs to live at Privet Drive in order to recharge the blood wards. I was going to have him collected as soon as the blood wards had fully recharged. That would have occurred within a day or two at most of the dementors' attack."

That did not appease Sirius in the slightest. He knew damned well the old man had deliberately misled him. However, there was nothing much he could do about it. He needed Dumbledore to finally get off his wrinkly old bum and engineer things to finally get him his ignored trial. Until he had his trial he still had a 'kill on sight' order on him; which meant he had no chance of ever gaining lawful custody of his godson.

It did not take him long to come to the conclusion Dumbledore didn't want him, Sirius, to gain such custody. And, right from that point, Sirius only told the old man just enough to have the old man not suspect anything.

Instead, Sirius had determined it would be up to him to set right what was wrong. He now 'knew' Voldemort was determined to kill Harry; and Sirius, as Harry's godfather, saw it as his duty to stand between Voldemort and his godson. That meant he had to both recover his auror reflexes and skills from the previous war, as well as learn a great deal more. He had to train, hard. And that meant he had to get sneaky... like a real Black.

While the Order of Phoenix had access to the main part of the house, Sirius had kept secret the house magical combat duelling and training room in the sub-basement. He'd adjusted the house wards to have that part of the house undetectable, even to Mad-Eye Moody's magical false eye.

Once he was ready and whenever he could get time alone, he went down to that room and trained.

One of the things he trained himself in was deliberately creating 'knee-jerk' responses within himself. And one of those 'knee-jerk', Pavlov's Dog, responses was reacting in a certain way to the verbalised two consecutive syllables of "Av" and "Ah", the first two syllables of the killing curse.

When Voldemort began to cast the Killing Curse towards Sirius, Sirius's 'knee jerk' ingrained trained reaction cut in.

His wand whipped up and launched a quick transfiguration point cast at a piece of marble detritus from the fountain only a few feet in front of him into a thick marble wall that rose to his chest and was four feet wide.

"KEDAVRA!" finished Voldemort, whipping his wand down and casting the brilliant green of the Killing Curse towards him.

However, as the wall sprung up before him, the headless golden statue of the wizard in the fountain had sprung alive, leaping from its plinth, and landed on the floor with a crash between his marble wall and Voldemort. The Killing Curse merely glanced off its chest as the statue flung out its arms, protecting Sirius.

"What―?" said Voldemort, staring around.

However, Sirius was already in his lethal combat mindset from the trigger phrase and was already moving to engage as Voldemort was turning to where the statue had come from.

As Voldemort breathed, "Dumbledore!" Sirius had also spotted the old man and banished his own section of the magical fountain at him.

Dumbledore was standing in front of the, now spell damaged, golden security gates leading towards the lifts with his attention focused on Voldemort. He did not see the huge hunk of fountain now rocketing towards him from the side.

Voldemort raised his wand and sent another jet of green light at Dumbledore, who began to turn into an apparation twist when the large piece of masonry hit him in the side, knocking him away.

The impact was so hard it sent Dumbledore flying to the side and out of the line of sight.

"STAY OUT OF IT, DUMBLEDORE!" roared Sirius, while his attention turned back to Voldemort. "HE'S MINE!"

As Voldemort turned a smirk back on Sirius he was shocked to see Sirius had already launched a curse at him. He had to rapidly raise his wand in an attempt to spell-swat it away. He missed.

The curse was a cutter and it nailed him in his left shoulder.

In shock at being hit, he was already back on the defensive as yet another curse... and another... were already on their way.

Now having to focus on the battle before him, Voldemort had to move quickly to shield himself.

"You cannot hope to defeat me, Black!" he called back, behind his shield.

Sirius rapidly cast a strong shield breaker and followed it up with another cutter before he paused and called back, "You keep thinking that Riddle, you half blood bastard!"

Yet more curses and charms flew between the two before Riddle call-demanded, "Do not call me by that filthy... muggle... NAME!"

More curses and protection charms, with Sirius moving about as if he was almost dancing. His moves, though appearing slow due to how smooth and graceful they looked, were actually quite quick. He was needing to shield and spell-swat dark curses and charms aside a lot less than Voldemort; who saw dodging as a sign of magical weakness.

Suddenly Sirius saw, out of the corner of his eye, the now one-armed centaur detach itself from the fountain and gallop towards him.