The Absence
Chapter 10
by The Conqueror Worm
"All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?"
-"Eleanor Rigby," The Beatles
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He had lifted her onto his motorcycle. He had told her to wrap both arms around his waist, to hold on tightly. His back and chest were warm, even through his jacket, and she had pressed her face against him, had closed her eyes as they rose through the air, up over Godric's Hollow, sailing over the clouds, before circling back toward her street, her home. When they'd landed, he'd grasped her hand, helped her off of the high seat. He'd carried her books to the door under one arm, holding her hand in the other as they walked up the stone path leading to her door. Before he'd rung the bell, he looked down at her, smiling quizzically. "I don't think you ever said. What's your name?"
"Hermione Granger," she'd said, and her voice had mercifully not squeaked this time.
"Hermione," he'd repeated, squeezing her small hand. "Like the Greek goddess."
Then, he'd released her to ring the bell, and he was speaking to her mother, explaining who he was, handing her books over, climbing onto his motorcycle and leaving her behind.
Hermione replayed this memory every night as she lay in bed, trying to fall asleep. It was, in effect, like every girly movie she'd sighed over, every book she'd scoffed at the other girls for reading and then secretly consumed feverishly on her own. The only part that wasn't right was that she was woefully still nine years old, and Sirius Black, however dreamy, was not remotely interested in her as a potential love interest. Hermione frowned and gripped her pillow tighter against her pajama-clad chest. It was going to take forever to grow up, to reach an age where Sirius Black might want to marry her. Hermione felt tears sting her eyes, and she shifted in order to press her face against her pillow. Life was so unfair.
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Prongs was racing ahead of him, rushing to shoulder check Moony back toward the path leading to the middle of the woods. The werewolf kept veering back in the direction of a town that lay twenty miles to the West, and Sirius and James had enough experience with werewolves to know how fast one could run such a long distance. Prongs made a small whinnying noise over his shoulder, his antlers glowing bone white in the light of the full moon. Padfoot forced himself to speed up, nipping playfully at the werewolf's tail with his blunt side teeth. The truth was that Sirius wasn't having an especially good time. They had gone out for drinks earlier, as this dulled the werewolf's bloodlust a bit on full moon nights, and he'd had a little too much. It was making it hard for the black dog to keep up with Prongs's prancing leaps and the werewolf's long strides, and his vision kept going blurry.
After another twenty minutes of running, those last few shots of Fire Whiskey really started to kick in. His body began to feel heavy, and he had to stop to rest for a moment. The dog watched the deer and wolf run off into the distance, neither noticing his absence, as he'd been behind them all night. After a few more minutes, when his dog ears could no longer catch the muffled pounding of hooves on the forest floor, Sirius turned back into a man and rested his back against a tree trunk, slumping over. After another half hour, this seemed too pathetic an action to continue. He rose unsteadily to his feet and Disapparated. It took him a few tries, but he finally appeared ten feet from his flying motorcycle and stumbled toward it.
He'd been living in a small flat in London since graduating from Hogwarts, living off of the money Uncle Alphy had left him. This money was quickly running out, however, as Sirius had enjoyed his bachelor life a little too much, spending wild amounts of money on food and liquor. And of course, there were many times when Remus, unemployed once again for mysteriously missing too much work around the full moon, had come to stay with him for long stretches at a time. None of this mattered much to a rather drunk Sirius now, though; the more pressing problem was that he was nowhere near his apartment. They'd been planning to go to James's for breakfast the next morning, and so, they had chosen some woods an hour away from Godric's Hollow. Sirius sighed. Perhaps Lily would let him in early if he begged.
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For most of the trip to Godric's Hollow, it had been rather touch and go. Sirius kept drifting off and losing his bearings; he constantly had to check in which direction he was going and adjust. At last, he landed rather heavily on Lily's and James's street, a few feet away from their house and on the opposite side of the street. It was late now, perhaps 2:30, if the incredibly blurry numbers on his watch were correct, and he was surprised to see all of the downstairs lights ablaze. He sat for a moment, watching the house, and felt oddly lonely. In all of his life, he had never had a home. Sure, he had stayed with the Potters, but that had been as a guest, no matter how warmly they treated him. His home life before that had been quite terrible, of course, what with his judgmental, angry parents. And even now, in his own apartment, it felt sad and empty. He always felt cold there, and he frequently turned into his Animagus form just to clear his thoughts. Remus, who was sad and dejected at the best of times, barely added any warmth to the apartment when there, as he always misread Sirius and thought that avoiding him, quietly sneaking around from room to room, was what Sirius desired.
Sirius was shaken from these thoughts by the loud sound of a door slamming and looked up in time to see a very furious Severus Snape strutting down the walk of the Potter's house. He was only stopped from calling out by the strange way Snape was walking and gritting his teeth. Finally, the black-clad man whipped himself around and Disapparated. A moment later, Lily, looking flushed, came rushing out of the house rather unsteadily. "Severus? Severus, wait! I can explain." She turned her head every which way, but he was gone. Looking dejected, she slunk back into her house, and after a few moments, the lights went off in the house.
Sirius sat frozen, gripping the handle bars of his bike and feeling a sort of numb horror at what he had just seen. It was obviously a moment that Lily had meant to keep hidden from her husband. Why had Snivelly looked so furious? Why had Lily run after him as if her life depended on it? Why in the world was Snape even at the Potters, on a night when James was gone and Harry was sleeping soundly in his bed? He wasn't sure what to do now, but he did know that going to the Potters was not an option. After a few minutes, he set off by foot, and it was only when he arrived at his destination that he knew he had meant to go there all along. With his wand, he levitated himself level to the second floor and looked into the window, relieved that he had found the right one on the first try. He knocked rather loudly on the window, his breath fogging up the glass.
Hermione sat up in bed, her heart pounding in her ears. A man, pale-faced and dressed in black, was floating outside her window. Images of every vampire movie she had ever seen flickered through her mind, and she hugged her pillow for dear life. It was only when the man smiled sheepishly at her that she realized that it was Sirius Black, and she nearly fell over in her race to open the window.
He toppled unceremoniously through the small window, nearly knocking her over. "'Lo," he said, grinning. "Sorry to barge in so late, but I'm a bit…under the weather and homeless. I don't suppose I could crash on your floor? In a purely platonic, non-pedo sort of way. I'll even be a dog."
Hermione missed half of the garbled drivel that he seemed to think was charming, but she nodded her head anyway, eager to agree with him. Sirius rose to his feet, walked a few steps, stumbled, and then collapsed onto the rug next to her bed. She watched all of this, unsure of his behavior. Her parents never drank to the point of excess, and so, her only experience with the idea of being drunk was through books and movies. She supposed that must be why he was here, and though her crush overrode these feelings, she still felt a little bit of stuffy disapproval at his behavior. Then again, she also felt a sort of eagerness at his reckless, bad boy behavior, so you really couldn't go by her judgment anyway.
"Er, so," she said, cautiously picking her way across her room and climbing back on her bed. She was very aware of the fact that she was wearing a pink nightgown decorated with, of all things, cartoon characters, and she hugged her pillow again, trying to hide this. Sirius, for his part, wasn't even looking at her. He lay motionless, his handsome face smushed into the carpet, and his eyes were barely open. "How are things?" This was the polite sort of thing her mother always said, even to her, when an awkward lull occurred or there was simply nothing else to say. It sounded silly even to her, but perhaps grown-ups always said things like that, trying so hard to smooth over the difficult moments in life.
Sirius was silent for so long that she thought he must have fallen asleep, but at last, he spoke, his voice muffled by the carpet. "I think my best friend's wife is having an affair."
"Really?" Hermione sat up straight, instantly rapt. "My mother's friend once had an affair. She talked about it constantly with Aunt Flora and Mrs. Morgan when she didn't know I was listening, but I was. I don't really understand why someone would have an affair. Don't you think love and marriage should be forever, just like in that movie? What's its name? Well, perhaps you didn't see it. Anyway, what makes you think she's having an affair? Did you catch her 'in the act?' That's what mother said her friend's husband did. I don't really get what that means. The act of what?" She stopped suddenly, out of breath from rambling so much. Hermione felt her face instantly redden when she realized that Sirius was now sitting up, staring at her with bewilderment etched into his attractive features. One of his eyelids was drooping lower than the other, but he still spotted the pile of Lily's books on the floor next to her bed.
With horror, she realized that A Wizard's Genealogy was open to the front cover where he had written, and beside it was the piece of paper where she had doodled 'Hermione Black' over and over again. "What's this?" he asked, reaching for the paper, but Hermione, completely sober, dove off of the bed and beat him to it, snatching it out of his grasp. She landed heavily on his lap, knocking the air out of him. She leapt off of him instantly, so red she thought her head might fall off, breathing heavily.
"Nothing. It's really nothing. Just taking notes," she panted while tearing up the paper into little pieces.
Sirius smirked, clearly amused. "Alright then," he said slowly, massaging the spot on his stomach where she had kneed him. "You're pretty red for it being nothing, you know." He laughed when her eyes bulged out in response. "Relax! Jeez, you're pretty intense for a kid, you know that?" He looked around the room, finally taking in all the little touches that showed who this tree-like girl really was—the figurines carefully lined up on a shelf by the closet, the wooden bookcase stuffed with books on a vast array of subjects, the pictures she had pinned up of all of her old friends from when she had been nothing more than a plain Muggle girl. A few framed posters of old French movies hung on her walls, perfectly straight. On her bed were various stuffed animals that she apparently slept on rather than pushing off onto the floor at night. He smiled sadly as he noticed these things. He had never been allowed to decorate the way he wanted when he was a child. Everything had been so dark and somber in his house, everything made of wood and etched with snakes. It wasn't until his teenage years that he had stubbornly insisted on his own decorations—an odd mixture of Muggle and Gryffindor souvenirs—but you could never cover up the feeling of repression in that house. Every one wore it like a cloak; it was in their very blood.
Hermione sat back down on her bed, slowly. "Are you okay?" she ventured as Sirius stared rather blankly up at her, as if he was trying to work out a difficult problem.
He jumped and then did his best to focus on her face. "I suppose. I should probably sleep now."
"Oh, right. Of course. How rude of me." They both seemed to notice what a strange response this was, but Sirius shook it off by turning into a dog. Hermione gasped, her brown eyes growing even larger in shock. Even though he had told her of this ability before, she had never expected it to be so instant. Magic, though she knew it was possible, had never seemed as real as it was in this moment, while she stared into the gray eyes of the biggest dog she had ever seen. Sirius flopped down on her rug again, shutting his eyes. "Wait," she said, and he whimpered in reply, looking pathetically up at her. "You don't have to sleep on the floor. You can sleep on the foot of my bed." Hermione seemed to have forgotten that she was not speaking to a real dog; she was simply too overwhelmed at the thought of what it must be like to have a pet. Her parents had always been too busy for pets, they said, despite her incessant pleading over the years.
Sirius, for his part, seemed to hesitate, but after a moment, he leapt onto the foot of her bed, causing her to let out a shocked little squeak. A few minutes later, Hermione was settled under the covers, gripping her favorite stuffed rabbit under one arm, and Sirius was snoring softly by her feet, feeling peaceful and truly wanted.
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Fluffy, I know. Don't worry; it'll start to get weird again soon. Next two chapters will follow up a little more with Snape and Lily. I'm finishing up the next chapter for Monday's update, but I also have a rather large paper due next Thursday, along with a test, so there may only be one new chapter next week. I'll do my best! : )