Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nope, not me.

A/N: Another Sirius interlude… perhaps creating more questions than it alleviates, but remember… all questions will be answered in their own good time!

_______________

"How was the Void made?"

Janus Snape shook his head. "Well, you'll have to understand I can't be completely sure - especially since I don't have any of the notes I took with me."

"That's all right," Sirius told him. "Anything that will give us a start."

"My field of study was the Void," Janus said, "and the one thing I have been able to conclude is this: this place is not the Void."

Sirius felt like he'd been Stunned. "Not the Void?"

"Not exactly, no," Janus answered. "The Void is infinite. This place - well, it's clear that it's finite. I mean, it's got walls, for a start. It stops."

"I think I'm beginning to understand," Sirius said slowly. "Do go on."

Janus cupped his hands. "What I've been able to conjecture," he said, "is that this place is like a bubble. It's like a piece of the Void has collapsed on itself and created a kind of warp - and that's where we are now." He sighed. "I devoted my whole life out there to studying the Void to the expense of everything else." He looked at Sirius with a desperation in his eyes. "The Void is a terrible place, Mr. Black. It was created by wights in the ancient times, and it is from there that the wights in the mortal world came. It is an eldritch place. When I began to study it… it possessed me, drove all of the love out of me. I became a wife-beater, a terrible father. My son is testimony to that." He sighed again. "At least here, the true Void, the great beyond, cannot touch me. All there is here is the night." He looked at Sirius sharply. "Why do you want to know this, anyway?"

Sirius pulled his wand out. "Because things have changed now, Mr. Snape," he answered urgently. "There is magic now in this place where there was none. We are no longer outside of time."

"They all start out like that, boy," Janus growled. "Desperate to escape. There is no escape from this place."

"There is a way in," Sirius said determinedly, "and so there must be a way out."

*

"A portal?" Aberforth Dumbledore looked at Sirius with questions in his eyes. "Of course that's what the veil is. What else would it be?"

"And a portal has to be from a place to a place, yes?" Sirius asked urgently.

"Well, yes…"

"If a portal can be built to lead in here, cannot one be built to lead out?"

Aberforth's eyes glittered dangerously. "Exactly how much do you know about portals, Mr. Black?"

"Not much," Sirius admitted.

Aberforth sighed. "I expected as much. Just like my fool brother."

"Albus Dumbledore?"

"He asked me to build a portal - for his convenience, of course - from Hogwarts to the Ministry of Magic just after Voldemort's rise," Aberforth replied. "Of course, he didn't understand how they work. He's not very subtle, Albus." He sighed again. "The amount of magic it takes to build a portal is immense, and it often doesn't work."

"Could we build one here?"

Aberforth snorted. "Of course not, boy! Granted, we have magic now. But one wand isn't much. It would need many wands and many wizards to break out of here. I know Janus's theory on what this place is. And to make a portal, you need substance." He cast his arms about. "This is a place of nothingness. There is no substance here." He curled up, leaning against one of the walls of the Void. "It's a fool hope you've got, boy."

*

"Nothing," Sirius confessed to Regina.

She quirked an eyebrow. "Nothing?"

He sighed. "Janus Snape tells me that this place is a collapse in the Void - that we're in a sort of bubble. Aberforth tells me that we could make a portal out of here, but we have neither the substance nor the magic - Reggie, why are you smiling?"

"Don't you understand, Sirius?" she said. "This has confirmed it!"

"Can you stop being so cryptic?" he asked. "I'm afraid I don't follow."

She leaned closer to him and hugged her knees happily. "If this place is not the Void - as Janus tells us it is not - then it is a place. Now that there is magic here, it is within time. I do not know how to travel between times, but from place to place… well, it is another matter. I have known Aberforth's conjecture for a long time - but we never had any magic at all before. Now, we do." She smiled dreamily.

"Reggie," Sirius said curiously, "have you not ever talked to Janus Snape about what the Void is? You sound as if his theory is news to you."

"It is," she said shortly.

"Why -"

"It was too painful," she murmured. "I could not talk to him and not think about…"

Sirius felt as if a tight fist were clenched about his heart. "He was… dear to you?"

Regina nodded. "Yes. He was."

____________

REVIEW!

And remember, I have other stories too. Read and review them as well - especially 'Cheese'!