A/N: The prompt was 'Alien in my backyard.' Animagus starts with an 'a' so why not? I think this was the scene that really kicked off my liking of SBHG stories. My favorite book in the series is Azkaban, and I think my favorite scene in it—and thus the whole series—is when Hermione calls Sirius by his name. She was probably the first person to address him in such a way in over a decade. I can't help but think that Hermione must have always held a special spot in his heart for that kindness alone.
THE DOG IN THE ROSES
by: carpetfibers
Hermione recognizes the black eyes peering out at her from the rose trees immediately, and she wastes no time in weighing consequences before leaping from her blankets on the lawn chair and into the thorny trees to tug him forward. Blood cakes his left front leg, a tar-like ooze dribbles down from his snout. She bites down on her lip hard enough to wince and then motions for him to wait.
A dash to the house to ensure her parents are busy in the kitchen, and then a dash back outside to gesture for safe passage. She clears the way for his slow climb up the stairs, a towel in hand to clean up behind him, and once he's safe in her bedroom, she locks the door and starts to consider her options.
"I can't use my wand, yet, Sirius- the trace will pick it up immediately. It'll have to be Muggle means only, plus whatever potions I have on hand. Is- is that okay?"
He doesn't transform, or move his head to signify his understanding; he only stares, panting slightly, and Hermione sighs, before reaching back to tie up her hair. The first aid kit in her bathroom includes rubbing alcohol, gauzes, antibiotic cream and a small bottle of paracetamol, none of which is appropriate for treating the wounds on an animal.
"Can you transform? I don't know how well I can clean out the wounds with all of this fur."
His large, furry head shakes once in the negative, and then she's leading him to the deep tub that makes up her bathroom. Under her careful hands and the warm water, she slowly cleans him from the mud and grime that coat his matted fur. His state speaks to days and weeks on the road, and she keeps her questions muted.
It takes thirty minutes before the water runs clear, and when she asks him again, "Can you transform?" he trembles beneath her hand once, before shifting with a stifled groan of pain. His human state is clean, at least, but no less battered, and she frowns and blinks back tears at the long gash that still oozes on his cheek.
"Hey," she says, hand combing through his hair, "I think I can help now."
ROSES
He spends his first day sleeping, waking only long enough for Hermione to hand him pain relievers and an old pepper-up she found in one of her trunk compartments. She holds her parents off with complaints of a headache- over-studying, she tells them- and she's both thankful and guilty when her mother leaves a tray of her favorite take-out curry by the door with a small word of comfort.
Sirius devours the take-out like it's Christmas dinner- two days more, and it will be- and when he plainly wants more, she sneaks down to the kitchen to steal one of the holiday pies her father had baked that morning, stuffed with pork and lamb and spiced carrots. She watches as he eats the pie more carefully, indulging in actually tasting the food as it reaches his mouth and goes down his throat. She waits and frowns, and when he finally finishes, she touches his forehead with the back of her hand, comparing it to her own.
Sirius stares at her like she's some unworldly creature, and she wonders if this is the first time someone's checked his temperature with a soft touch and not a spell.
"You're still rather warm," she tells him. "You should see a healer, or really anyone who can run a diagnostic spell and make sure you're not infected."
"This will do," he insists, his voice low and thick. "You will do."
When she checks his forehead again, it's her skin that's too warm, and she says nothing of it.
ROSES
He spends his second day digging through her room, lifting her books and then lowering them to other places. Hermione sits on her hands to stop the urge to go and fix them, to straighten and replace. He pours over the pictures she has balanced on her book shelves, caught between knickknacks from family trips and the odd rock or two she's picked up from a nearby park.
He palms a smooth black one that she found when she was seven and used to squeeze tightly when the children at school made fun of her too-clean shoes and bushy hair.
"Can you tell me what happened?" she asks, once the silence and his pacing grows too much to bear.
Sirius nears enough to loom over her, his lips thin and eyes as black and dark as ever as he regards her upturned face and barely disguised curiosity. "What would you guess?" he asks, passing the rock from one hand to the other.
"I would guess you were watching over Professor Lupin."
He cracks a smile at her words, and one of his large hands pats her head, like one might to a pet. She frowns and pulls from the touch, annoyed. "Smartest witch of her age- too smart, perhaps, yeah?"
"I doubt there's such a thing."
His laugh, half-bark, half chuckle, vibrates deep from his chest, and he sits next to her, cupping the rock carefully, his thumb tracing over its edges. "He's my last friend, you see, and open warrants be damned, I can't leave him to deal with that awfulness again- not alone."
She doesn't know much of it, of that time before when Dumbledore had sent Lupin to be with the wolves, to hopefully win over some of their loyalty. She only knows what Harry's told her, of the confusion the secrecy had caused, of the eventual choice to change the Potters' secret-keeper. She cannot imagine returning to that; she pictures her once-professor, his tired and kind features trapped in permanent self-loathing and surrounded by the very way of life he tries to hard to break from.
Not for the first time, Hermione doubts her headmaster's methods. She has never believed that the ends justify the means. Not when those means involve her friends.
Her head bows forward, her fingers laced together tightly in her lap. "I'd do the same," she tells him, voice fierce and honest.
His heavy hand finds her head again, his fingers combing carefully through her hair; she can feel his gaze even as she does not meet it. "I have no doubt."
ROSES
Early enough that it can barely be considered Christmas morning, he wakes her with a touch on her cheek. Hermione blinks into the pre-dawn darkness, taking in his change in clothes and shoes. Clean-shaven again, he resembles more the pictures from his youth than the half-starved man who she first greeted three years earlier as Mr. Black.
How silly she must have seemed to him then.
How strangely he always seems to look at her.
Her heart tightens as he nods down at her, voiceless in his farewell and thanks. She lets him reach the door before pushing aside her warm blanket and throwing herself tightly against his back. She can't remember ever touching him like this before, but she can't let him leave so easily. Can't let him think that he leaves to his only friend.
She is young, true, and from an age and time so different from the one he remains trapped in. But she can still be a friend. "Be safe, Sirius. Keep him safe, but you matter, too."
He turns in her grasp, loosening her arms to re-settle them more properly around his middle, and she breathes deeply of him, the scent a mix of her soap and that earthen quality that must be his alone. His arms return her embrace, fingers taut and controlled along the small of her back. She hears the shudder of his breath near her ear, the distant tremor of a sob caught in the sound.
"Come back to us?" she asks, voice muffled against his chest. His heart beat quickens, and she feels him nod above her. "Promise?" she prods.
He nods again. "I promise, duckie; you'll see enough of me yet."
He holds her long enough that light begins to gather from her window, and with plain reluctance, he finally steps back from her grasp. His hand touches her forehead, his thumb tracing along her brow and down her cheek, before breaking away and taking to the door. His steps soften as he transforms on the stair, and she turns to her window to watch as he bounds out from her house and into the thin layer of frost. Large and black, shaggy and ominous, she stares as his dark eyes reach up to hers, his lone howl breaking the silence of her neighborhood.
Hermione cannot call back, but her hand presses hard against her chest, and she feels the beat of her heart race as he disappears into the rose trees.