First Offense

~o~

In the beginning, she didn't know how cruel he could be.

In the beginning, every woman walks blindfolded towards the man she expects to love.

Love is blind. Love is trust.

No woman, on purpose, thinks she's going to end up abused. Even the word itself seems like an affront, an insult to her intelligence and autonomy.

Abused. Not Hermione Granger. The two didn't even compute.

Oh, there were signs and signals and they butted heads occasionally, but she was too infatuated to dwell on that anymore. Even the way she had overreacted to his stance on house-elves back in fifth year now seemed just that: an overreaction and infantile cry for his attention. Of course, Sirius Black was wrong about elves but then he had just been raised wrong, by supremacists. He needed correction, not condemnation. And she gave him plenty of that lately: empathy. An ear. Someone he could trust to listen to him.

She was surprised that Sirius even warmed to her. He had seemed to find her a nuisance before.

Now that she was older, he didn't seem to mind her presence anymore and they no longer fought about Kreacher or house-elves or his reckless behavior.

In fact, sometimes she thought he almost enjoyed her company too much and that they were becoming too close for Harry's comfort. But then every time she over at Grimmauld's Place and Sirius stole glances at her, she wrote it off as her own fanciful wishing. Sirius was probably just lost in his own thoughts, in his own anguish. It couldn't be anguish to be with her.

The idea that Sirius Black might even be interested in her was too flattering for her to acknowledge or put her normal defenses up. Normally resilient, brave and bright, lately she became a pile of mush if Sirius so much as smirked in her direction or made a joke for her.

But later much later, she realizes she should've seen it coming.

There were red flags all over how they became a couple.

Even their first kiss was stolen.

Of course, she would never have made the first move. Even though she had been in love with the older wizard for years, she did not expect for him to one day reciprocate.

She was totally unprepared for how it felt to be at the centre of Sirius's intense affection and gaze. It intimated her, she didn't know how to handle it. It was more than she had ever got from Ron or another boy her age.

Yet what Sirius Black wanted, he usually got.

And he was a full blooded, temperamental man.

Many years had passed since he was the most popular boy at Hogwarts but time did not seem to make less blunt his confidence or his sense of entitlement towards women.

Hermione should've been offended. She should've fought him off.

But then this had probably all been carefully orchestrated by him.

She was just a few days shy of turning legal, at 17, when Sirius followed her into the library at Grimmauld Place, pushed her against a bookshelf and kissed her on the lips.

"Do you like me Hermione?"

Too shocked to say anything, she had kissed him back in reply.

He tasted delicious and she was so in love with him. She loved his grey eyes and long black hair. His beautiful smile and his mischievous humor could turn her wet.

At the time, it seemed like a dream come true to finally kiss the man she had crushed on for years from afar. He seemed otherworldly and too good to be true.

In retrospect, she saw it now as the start of her downfall.

.

You couldn't fall in love with a broken man without being breaking yourself.

Later, she would blame herself.

~o~