I'm back! Followed a plot-bunny here ;) This should be a two-shot, I will upload the rest soon. Let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas for the next chapter!
...
It was a stupid plan, immature, beneath her really. Hermione shrugged. Sometimes it was necessary to lower yourself a bit to other people's levels. Specifically, Ron's level.
It was Christmas time, only six months since the end of the war. Everyone had gathered at Grimmauld Place to spend the season together. One big dysfunctional family.
Hermione sat in a couch in the corner of the living room, steadily drinking her way through a bottle of firewhiskey, and watched the people around her. Lupin and Harry seemed to be engaged in a serious conversation in the opposite corner, talking in quiet undertones while Lupin rocked Teddy's cradle between them. Tonks, Sirius and a few of the Weasley boys were laughing raucously at the bar, encouraging each other to down their drinks and occasionally bursting out into song when a favourite was played on the wizarding radio.
Ron and Lavender were entwined on the sofa, their amorous activities bordering on heavy petting. It was apparent that they had no regard for anyone around them. Hermione's lip curled at the sight. It wasn't that she was jealous. No, she had been very relieved when she and Ron had broken up almost as soon as they had gotten together. But the speed at which he had bounced back to Lavender had frankly been insulting, and the publicness of the whole matter had been somewhat humiliating.
And then she had heard Ron boasting about his conquest to some of the others in the kitchen late a couple of nights ago. 'Lavender's great', he puffed out his chest. 'She's really mature, you know, knows what she's doing. She's not ashamed of her sexuality, not afraid of taking what she wants. Unlike… well, you know.'
Hermione had stormed away fuming. Yes she did know. Know that she hadn't been ready to sleep with a man-child who should have known better than to try to push her into sex so soon after all the horrors they had experienced in the final battle. Know that her problem hadn't been her maturity or sexuality, but rather the lack of grace and sensitivity of her partner. Know that she wouldn't have hesitated if she had been in the arms of a certain dark hero she had been fantasising about for the best part of a year.
Hermione shook her head and took a big gulp from her glass. Best not to let her thoughts stray down that avenue again. He was gone. They had spent a year in close quarters, brewing together to further the war effort, and then suddenly he had disappeared. They hadn't seen hide nor hair of him since his brief appearance at the celebrations the night after the battle had been won. Clearly, she had misunderstood the tension that she thought she had felt silently growing between them in those final months.
She was startled from her musings when the Weasley twins started loudly singing a very dirty version of Silent Night. She looked up to see them swaying to the music arm in arm, identical expressions of cheek and mirth on their faces. Ron and Lavender had finally surfaced too, to watch the show.
Sirius made eye contact with Hermione and raised his eyebrows in question, a smile curling his lips. Hermione nodded. Now was a good time to execute the little plan they had concocted drunkenly the night before. She wanted to demonstrate to Ron once and for all that she wasn't the sexless nun he was portraying her to be, and Sirius had always enjoyed a prank.
He put down his glass and strode towards her, holding his arms out wide. 'Hermione!' he shouted across the room as he approached, drawing the attention of the others. 'I've missed you, my love', and with a leering grin he pulled her up out of the couch, swung her in his arms, and settled them back down with her in his lap. There was a shocked silence as she leaned up to kiss him, before the Weasley twins started to belt out another, even dirtier verse while raising their glasses at the couple. The others joined in, too drunk to question the rather unexpected revelation of Hermione and Sirius as lovers.
Hermione slid her tongue into Sirius' mouth, noting with interest that she felt no rise of desire, no twinges of passion in their interaction. Sirius was, she supposed, a very attractive man. Tall and muscly with a contagious light-hearted energy about him. But he was too insincere, too rowdy, too irresponsible for her. But when she opened her eyes and saw Ron's slack-jawed expression of shock as he openly gaped at them, Hermione continued the performance with enthusiasm, pleased that the plan was working.
Eventually, she hopped out of Sirius' lap and helped pull him up, pressing herself against him when he was standing. 'Let's take the show elsewhere,' she whispered in his ear, giggling somewhat gleefully when she noticed that Lavender was still fruitlessly trying to regain Ron's attention.
Sirius took her hand and almost ran from the room, dragging her behind him. To any observer, it would seem as though they were desperate to continue their love-making upstairs.
As she let herself be pulled up the stairs, laughing whole-heartedly at the rare fun she was having at the expense of the others' misconceptions about her, Hermione failed to notice the horrified gaze which followed her from the dark figure standing stock-still in the hallway.
When they got into her bedroom, Sirius and Hermione leant against the closed door breathing heavily and laughing. It all might have seemed less funny if they had had less to drink, but as it was, it was hard to stop giggling once they had started.
They spent the next half hour jumping on the mattress and making loud sex sounds, moans and groans, laughing all the while.
'You know,' Sirius said at one point, suggestively waggling his eyebrows, 'it would be easier if we actually shagged.' He winked at her.
Hermione threw the pillow at him which she had been thumping against the headboard. 'Over my dead body,' she growled, picking up another pillow to whack him over the head with. He laughed in response, and she started giggling again. Merlin, it felt good to just let go and have some fun. It had been too long since she had allowed herself this much freedom from her thoughts and her memories and her longings for what she could never have…
When they left her room again, both Sirius and Hermione were breathless and bright-eyed with flushed cheeks. They looked just like a couple who had recently finished a wild bout of sex. Just as they had planned.
What they hadn't planned for, was the figure waiting for them in the corridor, dressed all in black and visibly shaking with fury. Severus Snape loomed over them, a dreaded expression on his face and his eyes tinged with betrayal and disgust.