Disclaimer: This is a fanwork, created only for the love of the fandom. I do not own the world of Harry Potter, and no profit is being made.

Author's note: This story was inspired in part by a scene in Rowena Hill's story Leather and Lace, in which Sirius and Hermione visit a record shop and purchase a Fleetwood Mac album. Further inspiration comes from listening to Stevie Nicks, Queen, and Iggy Pop. I've always had this headcanon that Hermione's father raised her to love classic rock, and I just couldn't resist writing a one-shot about Hermione and Sirius enjoying music together. I do already have plans for at least one follow-up to this story, and for simplicity's sake, any additional works in this little universe will be posted as subsequent chapters, though I make no promises as to when they might be added, and each one should be able to stand alone. Lastly, if you want the full story on how and why Sirius is alive here, please refer to my one-shot entitled The Way Out Is Through. It explains not only his return from the Veil, but also some of his character development, and while not necessary to enjoy this story, I believe that it adds depth which enhances it.

xXx

Bella Donna

August 1996

Remus stepped out of the Floo and into the kitchen of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, taking in the sight of a rather disgruntled-looking Harry and Ron, who were slumped over the table, half-heartedly engaged in a game of Exploding Snap. "Good afternoon Harry, Ron," Remus said in greeting.

"Hey," was the lackluster response.

Chuckling, Remus asked, "So what's got your wands in a knot today?"

"It's that bloody box of records you brought over last week!" burst Ron.

"Oh? I rather thought you all enjoyed that? And anyway, what's that got to do with it?" queried Remus in confusion.

Harry sighed. "It was great at first. But it's gotten out of hand. We've barely had a moment of peace in days."

He strained to hear what the boys were complaining about, but couldn't figure out what the problem was. "It's quiet right now," Remus pointed out.

"It'll start up again in a minute," assured Harry. "They're probably just switching out the record."

"They?" Remus frowned.

"Yeah, that's the worst part!" spat Ron. "Ever since you gave Sirius those records, he and Hermione are suddenly best bum chums now! It's like they're the only two members of some Muggle music fan club. There's no use trying to talk to them about anything else. They just spend all day, every day, blasting music at top vol-" his words were cut off by what sounded like carnival music, followed by the wail of an electric guitar and the brutal pounding of a drumset. "See, there it is again," he groaned, waving vaguely in the direction of the kitchen door.

Remus tried to hide his grin as lyrics sung in a falsetto voice joined the mix. "Ahh… You can't honestly tell me that you don't like Queen? That's blasphemy."

Rolling his eyes, Harry said, "They were all right the first ten times, but now it's getting old."

"And it's not like we can put up a Silencing charm without getting in trouble for using magic outside of school," Ron griped.

"That is quite the conundrum you boys have," Remus agreed, chuckling quietly to himself. "But I think I'll try to brave the music and go say hello."

"They're in the parlor. Can't say we didn't warn you," said Harry soberly, as Remus headed up the steps to the main hallway. The volume doubled when he opened the kitchen door, and he closed it quickly behind him for the sakes of the weary young men at the table.

Stepping into the foyer, Remus mentally patted himself on the back. As annoying as Harry and Ron may have found the music, it had apparently done its job in cheering Sirius's spirits. Circe's sweet left tit, the poor guy more than had it coming to him, after over a decade of wrongful incarceration, being forced to hide out in the ancestral home that he hated, and most recently, a month-long stint in the abyss that the Department of Mysteries so inadequately referred to as simply a 'Veil.'

All things considered, Remus thought that the mild irritation of his housemates was a small price to pay for some long overdue joy in Sirius's life. And besides, it wasn't as if everyone was miserable, he reasoned with himself. After all, hadn't the boys said that Hermione was enjoying it too?

He rounded the corner to the doorway, and what he saw inside the room gave him pause. He halted his advance and leaned against the doorframe, watching Sirius lead Hermione around the room in a jaunty ballroom dance as 'Killer Queen' blared through the speakers attached to the record player.

They both looked so deliriously happy, prancing around to the rhythm of the song, that Remus was loath to interrupt. Instead, he edged himself backward a bit farther so that he could observe unnoticed for a little longer.

As Freddie Mercury belted out "...guaranteed to blow your mind!" Sirius spun the young witch out with a full extension of his arm, before spinning her back in and ending the move with a low dip that had her giggling breathlessly.

Remus's eyebrows hit the ceiling. There was nothing inappropriate to what they were doing; it all appeared to be innocent, harmless fun, and even if it hadn't, Hermione's seventeenth birthday was mere weeks away. She was close enough to being legally considered an adult that Remus had little concern for any moral component of their actions, though he did concede to himself that that might not be the prevailing opinion of other members of the Order.

No, what he found shocking was the lighthearted way in which they were interacting with one another. They weren't bickering about the deplorable way that Sirius treated Kreacher or about Hermione's swotty tendencies; rather they seemed to genuinely delight in each other's company. He caught a rare glimpse of the spark that had been a trademark of Sirius Black's in another lifetime - that glitter to his eyes that only occasionally made a brief appearance for his godson these days. And that little furrow that had a permanent home in Hermione's brow was notably absent as she laughed up at her dance partner, who whirled her around with his gentlemanly hold on her waist.

It was entirely unexpected. And if Remus wasn't mistaken, they actually had chemistry. He suddenly felt as if he was intruding on something special and private, so he quietly shuffled his way out of view of the parlor door before turning and retreating back to the kitchen.

Harry and Ron looked completely unsurprised to see Remus return so quickly. "I just wanted to check in on Sirius, and it seems he's doing well. I'll just fix some tea, if you don't mind the company," said Remus by way of explanation.

The two teenagers smirked at each other and Harry kicked out a chair for their former professor. "Not at all. Now, I don't want to say we told you so, but…"

"We told you so," finished Ron.

Remus ran a hand through his hair and, shaking his head slightly, began pulling the supplies he needed to make a pot of tea.

xXx

Queen's Sheer Heart Attack came to an end, filling the room with that soft crackling sound that only a record player could make. "Okay, little miss," said Sirius in between breaths, collapsing onto the couch next to Hermione, "You get the next pick." The endearment had evolved from the more formal title of 'Miss Granger', which he had taken to calling her in response to her teasing use of 'Mister Black' whenever he taught her a new dance step.

If there was one good thing that came from his pretentious upbringing, it was that he could cut a rug like it was nobody's goddamned business.

She grinned at him as she pushed herself back up off the couch. "Something a little more sedated this time, you think?"

Shrugging, he answered, "It's your choice. Surprise me."

Nodding thoughtfully, she wandered back over to the record player and sat cross-legged on the floor to shuffle through the assortment of albums. Sirius reclined back against the couch as he waited, making himself more comfortable. To say that he had been thrilled when Remus showed up with those records would be the very definition of an understatement. His oldest friend had spent weeks painstakingly attempting to recreate the music collection that Sirius had prized prior to his incarceration, and he was immeasurably touched by the effort of the project.

If Sirius had returned from Azkaban a bit reckless, immature, and desperate to reclaim his stolen youth, his return from the Veil was a complete one-eighty from that. The month that he had apparently spent stumbling through a world that couldn't be defined in terms of time and space had given him ample opportunity to consider his life choices and the repercussions thereof. Acting with haste and passion was what had landed him in prison in the first place, and if Sirius was honest with himself, also how he ended up falling into that strange purgatory during the fight in the Department of Mysteries. When his number was finally called, so to speak, for the Powers That Be to determine his fate, he was ejected right back through the Veil in the same jarring manner in which he had entered.

He wasn't sure if it was dumb luck, or if it was somehow fated that Alastor Moody just happened to be checking something nearby when Sirius ungracefully smacked down onto the floor outside the Veil. Perhaps it was a bit of both, but as Sirius Black was still wanted for his escape from Azkaban, the Ministry wasn't exactly the safest place for him to be wandering about. But Moody found him and was able to successfully smuggle him out of the Ministry and back to Order headquarters unnoticed.

Grimmauld Place was most decidedly not Sirius's first choice for sanctuary, but then again, it beat the hell out of being dead. Or being in prison, for that matter. And Sirius was resolved to make good on his promise to himself to be a better man this time around. He couldn't change the past, and living in the moment had already gotten him into enough trouble for two lifetimes, but he could look toward the future, and try his damnedest to make it something worth living for.

He owed it to Harry - and to the memory of James and Lily - to finally get his shit together and act like a grown-up. His godson didn't have much in the way of role models, and he was at a critical time in his life, developmentally speaking. The young man deserved to have someone there for him consistently, to be a mentor and to help guide him not only through the fight against Voldemort and his followers, but also through the everyday perils of adolescence. Who could Harry turn to for advice about interacting with girls or taming that unruly shock of hair, if not his godfather? Sirius didn't want Harry's only source of information to be the Weasley twins - or, god forbid, Hagrid, who was friendly enough, but suave with the ladies he most certainly was not.

That meant that Sirius had to suck it up and make some sacrifices, for the benefit of those that he loved. If holing up in his hated childhood home until Dumbledore could obtain an official pardon for Sirius's conviction was what he had to do to ensure Harry's safety - not to mention his own - then it was worth it. He could be responsible, if the end result was that he was alive and able to look after his godson the way he'd promised to do all those years ago.

So he was trying. He really was. It was challenging, and meant both breaking lifelong habits as well as establishing new ones, but he was making the effort. He was committed to remaining true to his word, and he'd been putting in the hard work to do so since the day he returned from his exile to purgatory.

While Sirius knew that the music collection was partially a reward for his good behavior over the summer - as well as an incentive to keep it up - he also knew that Remus was attempting to give him back a piece of his humanity that had been lost over the years. The thought alone meant the world to him, and the box of records itself had already provided him with hours of joy.

What he didn't expect was the joy that it would also give Hermione Granger. At first he had hoped that it was something that he could bond with Harry over, but his godson's interest waned quickly. He preferred playing Quidditch, or discussing team stats in the league and speculating on who might be in the running for the next World Cup. Harry just didn't seem to possess that same soul-crushing love for classic rock that Sirius felt down to his bones. Which was fine; he was prepared to indulge in his new music collection in solitude, and he was completely content with the notion… Until he found a kindred spirit in Hermione.

Given her Muggle upbringing, it shouldn't have been all that surprising that she loved 70's rock 'n' roll, but it was a fact that was incongruent with the image he had previously constructed of the young woman. He had always thought that she was a bit nerdy and uptight, and he was pleased to discover that she in fact had many layers of personality that he would have never guessed at. She confessed to him that much of her childhood was spent doing exactly what they had been up to for several days now: playing album after album and just letting the music wash over her. The first magic she had ever experienced, she had told Sirius with a shy smile, was the Pink Floyd concert that her father had taken her to when she was eight years old.

That had been the start of a new friendship between two unlikely individuals, and much to the mutual dismay of both Harry and Ron, Sirius and Hermione had spent the better part of the last week exploring their love of music together. Sirius regaled her with stories of growing up in that era, and Hermione had been compiling an ever-growing list of newer music to introduce him to. Sometimes they danced, sometimes they sang along - though they were both mediocre singers at best - and sometimes, they just sat and listened to the music.

"Oh!" exclaimed Hermione, interrupting Sirius's reverie. "This is perfect! I can't believe we haven't listened to this one yet."

Sirius cracked a grin at her unabashed enthusiasm. "Don't ruin the surprise. Just put it on and see how long it takes me to guess what it is." She fiddled with the player for a moment, and mellow piano notes rang out as she turned to face him with an expectant look, cheeks flushed with excitement. He recognized the music immediately. "Ohhh…" he breathed reverently. "Stevie."

Hermione made her way back over to the couch and dropped into the spot she had been sitting in before. "You approve of my choice?"

He nodded slowly, fighting to keep the goofy smile on his face to a minimum. That he 'approved' of her choice was so much of an understatement that he almost laughed. "Bella Donna came out the summer before… well… you know. I loved this album. I had such a huge crush on Stevie Nicks growing up, and I had this poster of her in my flat that James was always messing with - the prat - and I was forever coming home to find that she suddenly had a handlebar moustache, or that she had been charmed to dance the Charleston, or some dumb thing like that…"

Hermione leaned the side of her face up against the back of the couch and pulled her feet up onto the cushion so that she could face him comfortably as he reminisced out loud.

"I had this bet with Remus," he continued, "that she was a witch. I mean, it just seemed so obvious, you know? Anyway, he was convinced that she wasn't, that she was just one of those Muggles who somehow seems to be in tune with our world, or that it was a marketing thing or whatever, but I just knew I was right. So I spent, oh, probably a month or so researching, looking up old ancestry records and the sort, which was a little tricky at first since she's American, but it got easier as I was able to trace her family back to Europe, and guess what I found out?" He turned to her with a smug look on his face.

"What did you find out?" Hermione obediently responded.

"Witch, just like I thought. Half-blood, on her mum's side, but she was raised as a Muggle and only did magic at home," he said matter-of-factly.

"You're putting me on." She looked skeptical.

"Nope. I'll have you know that my research was very well-documented," he insisted, laughing. "Had to be, to get Remus to pay up. It was quite a hefty bet."

"What did you win?" she asked curiously.

His face lit up mischievously. "Well, how do you think I got picked to be Harry's godfather?"

"Now I know you're putting me on!" she scolded, playfully kicking him.

He shook his head. "Why else would Lily agree to it? Remus is far more responsible than I am."

She rolled her eyes at him. "While that is true, I still don't believe you."

His laughter finally gave him away. "Okay, yeah, I made that part up," he admitted. "He actually had to go into the Three Broomsticks and serenade Rosmerta with AC/DC's 'Whole Lotta Rosie.'"

Clapping a hand to her mouth, Hermione gasped, "Oh my god, he didn't!"

"He did. It was incredible," he said happily, a far-away grin on his face. "Of course, I got banned from the pub for a month because of it."

"Wait, why did you get banned for it?" she interjected.

He shrugged. "She just naturally assumed I was to blame, and Remus, of course, let me take the fall. Didn't want his reputation tarnished, the swotty little bastard," he muttered, scowling. "I put Zonko's Patented Magically-Lingering Itching Powder in his pants to get even, and told him that his crotch fleas were karmic justice for not believing in the magic of Stevie Nicks."

Giggling and shaking her head, she said, "You're incorrigible."

Perking back up, he said, "True, but I always thought that Stevie would like that about me. Women find my antics to be very charming."

"What women? Where?" Hermione responded with a straight face, glancing around the room, presumably searching for the women in question.

He glared at her in mock annoyance. She really was a lot funnier than he had ever given her credit for. It was just a subtle, dry wit that was easily overlooked, and sometimes got buried in her otherwise no-nonsense demeanor. It wasn't all that unlike Remus' sense of humor, when he thought about it. He suddenly found himself happy not just to witness it, but to also be a catalyst for it, as he doubted that she got much appreciation for her humor from peers her own age. Hell, he'd barely appreciated it up until now, and here he was, an allegedly fully grown adult.

"I was quite the young stud back in my day, thank you very much," he sniffed.

"The operative phrase here is 'back in your day,'" she volleyed back, the hint of a smirk curling her lips.

Arching an eyebrow, he said, "I suppose you think you're in a position to judge, what with all the international Quidditch stars you have panting after you." At that, she blushed, and he mentally congratulated himself at getting her to crack.

"It was only one Quidditch star, and he didn't pant… exactly," she defended.

The qualifier she tacked onto the end was interesting enough for him to quirk an eyebrow, but her blush kept on deepening, so he chose to let that one go. "So what's your favorite song on this album?" he asked, bringing the subject back to the music.

"Oh, that's a tough one. I mean, they're all so good, aren't they?" She sighed, looking upward as if the answer would appear to her on the ceiling. "'Leather and Lace' maybe? Or 'Stop Draggin My Heart Around'?"

"So you like the duets, then?"

"I guess so," she agreed. "I like the way she harmonizes with Tom Petty especially. What about you?"

"I know it's probably clichéd, but 'Edge of Seventeen' is my favorite. That riff is so haunting, and man, she really just belts it out, you know?" He could feel his goofy grin getting out of control again, but he didn't care.

"Yeah. I get it." She shifted a little, snuggling deeper into the couch, digging her toes in between the cushions. Her eyes fluttered shut, a soft smile spreading across her features as she listened to the music play on.

Taking a cue from her, Sirius did the same, leaning back and letting himself get lost in the sounds of Stevie singing and the long-forgotten feelings that it evoked. His mind drifted, taking him back to those few years of bliss between Hogwarts and Azkaban that, though rife with the threat of ongoing war, had still been the happiest time of his life.

Except… Things really weren't so bad anymore, were they? He still had Remus, and though James and Lily were, of course, irreplaceable, the void that he'd felt for so long had slowly been filled. The pain was no longer unbearable, and - he realized with a start - it was due in large part to the fact that he had, somewhere along the way, managed to construct himself a new surrogate family. He was actually… happy, in this odd little existence he'd carved out for himself.

Harry was so much like his father, and yet still his own person. While Sirius loved that James lived on through his son, having the opportunity to learn the nuances that made Harry unique was a beautiful experience. Witnessing the shenanigans that seemed to follow the Weasley boys wherever they went was an amusing reminder of his own delightfully misspent youth, and Ginny was a formidable young witch in her own right. He wasn't sure exactly when it had happened, but he had come to fondly regard her as the baby sister he'd never known he wanted. He'd finally had the chance to really get to know his cousin Andromeda and her daughter, Tonks, who was a real spitfire of a young woman.

And then there was Hermione… His eyes cracked open and he snuck a glance at the girl sitting peacefully on the other end of the couch. They'd certainly had their ups and downs in the time they'd known each other - from her saving his life with a Time Turner and astounding him with her precociousness at the tender age of fourteen, to him being annoyed by her swift and harsh judgement of his actions in his own home as a naively indignant fifteen-year-old - but as she hovered on the precipice of adulthood, he found that he now felt only the warm glow of affection for her.

Sure, she was still a swotty, bossy little thing, but in all honesty, she reminded him a bit of Lily at that age. Irritating at times, yes - but endearingly so. And much like how both Lily and Remus had served as the very necessary anchor that tethered James and himself to solid ground during some of their wilder moments, Hermione's tenacity was a crucial component to the family unit that Sirius now found himself a part of.

He was not ignorant to the role that she had played in the many (mis)adventures that she'd been a party to with Harry and Ron; indeed it was quite likely that she was the sole reason that the three of them had managed to survive much of it. The boys weren't lacking in the stereotypical Gryffindor traits - particularly the propensity to rush headlong into danger - but she balanced them out by bringing her keen and cunning mind to the table, and Sirius was immensely grateful for that particular trait in her.

She really was beginning to come into her own, and Sirius wondered idly when one of the two aforementioned boys would notice it. Though, he admitted to himself, it was entirely impossible that neither of them would until it was too late. He knew that, at their age, he'd been completely lacking the maturity required to appreciate such an understated gem, and he wouldn't be surprised if Harry and Ron were unfortunately late for that party as well. Maybe one of the other Weasley boys would decide to court her; she seemed like the sort of young woman who would be well-suited for someone a bit older.

Truthfully, he suddenly realized, it was a shame that he was quite as old as he was… If the age gap between them wasn't so inappropriately wide, she'd be exactly the type of witch that he would be interested in pursuing these days. But the circumstances were what they were, and he forced himself to dismiss the thought as quickly as it had occurred to him.

As if on cue, the opening notes of 'Edge of Seventeen' sounded out, and he could have laughed out loud at how accurately the song represented the situation at hand.

Hermione opened her eyes and beamed at him; it was the kind of smile that spread warmth through him like the first rays of sunlight at dawn. He wished he could capture it in a jar to keep with him for darker times. "It's your favorite song," she said softly.

Nodding slowly in agreement, he said, "It really is." A smile of his own bloomed on his face, and there they sat, just two music aficionados grinning at each other like loons as they listened to Stevie Nicks sing out her soul.

xXx

"Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!"

-Albus Dumbledore