This was a quick drabble I wrote for the GrangerBlack LJ community. I recently took another look at it and realized that I still kind of liked it, in spite of a number of failings. This is so rare that I decided to put it up here too.

For those who are interested, I should also start mentioning that I have an original novel on its way some time in the not-so-distant future. Keep up with it at
http : // cj-miller . livejournal . com - there's an excerpt posted for those who friend.

The Lucky One
By Rurouni Star

And if I say to you tomorrow. Take my hand, child, come with me.
It's to a castle I will take you, where what's to be, they say will be.
Catch the wind, see us spin, sail away, leave today, way up high in the sky...
- What Is And What Should Never Be, by Led Zeppelin

She used to have those dreams. The ones people say you have when you've lost someone, and they come back to comfort you.

They were nothing special. Never overly imaginative. It would just be him, sitting at the table at Grimmauld Place, picking up a glass of whiskey and laughing at something or other– someone elusive, just out of sight. Most times, he was relaxed, with little or nothing to worry about. Sometimes, though, he was animated and cheerful in ways he'd rarely shown in life. The worried creases on his face would ease away as he spoke, folding into long-forgotten laugh lines that deepened with a brilliant smile.

Sirius never acknowledged her directly, in those dreams. Oh, sometimes he'd look her way, pass her over as he talked to someone else. He seemed to know she was there, certainly. It just didn't bear remarking on. Because she was there, and she would always be there, and there was no particular need to draw attention to that fact.

I am happy, his expression would say to her. I am very happy, and you shouldn't worry.

And Hermione accepted this for what it was.

Time passed, as it does tend to do. The dreams slowly faded as more important concerns took over. The time between them stretched longer and longer, though they never quite went away entirely. As the war dragged on, and on, and on, though, very bad things began to catch her like nightmares during the day, and she dragged the dreams back to her with a desperate passion, clutching those happy images to herself as though she could somehow make them into the reality.

The less Hermione found reason to smile herself, the more Sirius began to look unbearably cheerful in contrast. He would smile, with those laugh lines etched deep and genuine, and he would look at everyone but her. And oh, how that began to hurt.

The hardest days were those she didn't sleep at all. She'd wonder if he were still there at that table in Grimmauld Place, smiling and laughing in spite of her absence. As days grew darker, and nights grew longer, and Hermione grew ever more stretched upon her bones, she thought about it more desperately and more bitterly.

Look at me! she would scream into her dreams. Don't you see? Don't you see, you have nothing to be happy about, and I have nothing, nothing...

But he would merely smile that gentle smile, at someone just behind her. And she would wake with tears hot on her face, wondering at her envy for a man long dead.

As people died, she halfway expected to see them join him at his table, carousing in a friendly way, in a place just beyond her reach. But those that were lowered into the cold earth seemed to stay there, instead of rising to that warm and mocking table. Sirius stayed there alone, drinking his precious whiskey and smiling his white smile, and Hermione began to hate him for it. But still, she couldn't bring herself to look away.

They told her, during the day, how very brave she was, how great her heart must be to continue on the broken road that had swallowed the bones of so many others. She never said the words she thought to say, about desperation and resignation and the realization that there was nothing else for her, anyway. There was no telling them that they had all cheated her by needing her help, stealing away the precious bit of human warmth and empathy she still possessed, leaving her none for herself, and none for the hateful, misguided smile at the table.

Then one day, she laid her head upon a stiff, hard pillow, and closed her eyes in numb despair– and she saw him there, more achingly content than she had ever seen him before. And as his eyes looked up past her shoulder, she shot herself forward to grab him by the collar and wrench him from his seat with an inhuman cry of agony.

Sirius stumbled from his comfortable place at the table, shocked and somewhat appalled. And then, he looked at her.

Hermione saw the terrible understanding dawn upon him. His hands steadied on her shoulders, and she heard him speak, but couldn't understand the words. They were soft and warm and sorrowful, though, and when she threw herself into his arms to sob the night away, he didn't move.

She woke to tears on her pillow in an empty room, and felt the hollowness in her soul acutely.

You were the lucky one, she thought to herself dimly, as she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. But that wasn't entirely true, she knew, because if he had stayed, if he had only been there, it all would have been somehow much more bearable than it was. She could have kept her smile, perhaps. Not one like his, but maybe a small one, here and there.

Sirius never smiled at his table, ever again. When she saw him, he was sitting there, in quiet contemplation of his alcohol. And there was sadness there that she had put in him, and she felt the burden of another guilt begin to settle onto her shoulders with the others.

The day came, soon after, that she was forced to kill a man. It desecrated her soul, tore it piece from piece, until she was left as a cold, unfeeling shell. Sirius pressed his calloused hand to her cheek that night as she stared off into nothing, and she thought she heard him murmur: What a waste, what a terrible waste. They've been so cruel to you.

His voice was low and soothing, and she wanted suddenly nothing more than to bury herself inside it and never leave. She slept late, with the lethargy of apathy in her limbs, and no one stopped her.

And when the end came, unfeeling and unforgiving– when screams surrounded her, and people died around her, and some of them died because of her, she found herself trembling and bleeding on the cold ground, staring at the sun that had begun to dip below the horizon.

It blinded her slowly to sleep, as her warmth seeped out between her fingers.

And she was standing in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, with a smudged and bloodied face. Sirius was there, pressing a hand to her cheek, wiping at her salt-water tears with his thumb and smiling at her sorrowfully.

He took her into his arms, pressing fingers into her tangled, dirty hair. The cold faded into warmth again, and she held him back dimly, wondering if she would pass him by like all the others had.

No, he murmured to her. No, there's a place for you. Just for you, Hermione.

He took her by the hand, to show her where a chair waited at his table. And Hermione smiled, for the first time in a very long while.