I know I know! Sorry it took so long, it was a bitch to write. Enjoy.


She knows that she is being watched. The eyes that are focused upon her are burning the skin of her back underneath her dress to the point that, if she looked at the smooth skin between her shoulder blades in a mirror, she'd see his name carved there. She wants to turn around and catch him in the act, to look him in the eye and raise a glass to the fury that is most likely simmering behind his dilated pupils. His dilated pupils that betray an arousal only she can incite from him. Of course, she isn't going to turn around, because turning around would mean acknowledging the fact that all the while she's been talking to Luna, she's been aware of him sitting on the other side of the bar.

It would mean acknowledging their new game. The one where he watched her and she pretended not to notice. The one where he feared her and she pretended not to relish it.

"And then I kissed him!" She choked out a hysterical laugh and slammed her head down on the counter top, the steady thrum of alcohol and adrenaline through her veins stopping her from feeling any pain.

Lune looked vaguely amused, her vacant eyes bright with humour, slender fingers drawing circles on the tabletop next to her untouched drink. "Why did you do that Hermione?"

It strikes Hermione that their conversation thus far has seemed a bit like a therapy session. She's been telling Luna things about her life recently and Luna has responded with questions, completely ignoring any return questions that Hermione has thrown her way. It is this realisation that sobers her up fast and she sits up quickly, suddenly no longer feeling as drunk as she did ten minutes ago.

The look she gives Luna is sharp, the Hermione that trusts no one and questions everything breaking effortlessly through the four glasses of Firewhiskey she's consumed. 'how do you feel about that Hermione? Why did you do that Hermione? What's in it for you Hermione?' All the questions Luna's been asking her suddenly fill her with a hard feeling of resentment.

"Does there have to be a reason?" Her counter question comes out cold and she knows that Luna has felt the shift in atmosphere by the way her silver eyes become less cloudy.

"There always is with you."

A shiver runs down her spine, the cool shock momentarily quelling the hot, slow ache of Sirius' gaze. The two women stare at each other levelly for a few seconds, a potential war churning up the air between them.

"If I didn't know better, I would say I've done something to upset you." Hermione voices it carefully, her tone remaining neutral, the accusation up for interpretation. Luna's eyes flicker to something over Hermione's shoulder and the oxygen leaves her lungs in realisation.

"He's been watching you since we walked in." Luna says offhandedly, as though its an observation anyone would make. "But you already know that, don't you?"

"What are you talking about?" The whispered question isn't just a play for time, Hermione genuinely doesn't understand why Sirius Black watching her would be enough to make the blonde girl's eyes harden in rage.

As if she had read her mind, Luna reaches out and wraps her fingers around Hermione's wrist. Instinctively, her right hand curls around her wand, resting in the holster on her thigh but all Luna does is yank her arm across the table.

"You've had goose bumps all night Hermione." Luna hisses the words as her grip becomes painfully tight. "Don't pretend like you have no idea who I'm talking about."

Hermione swallows the lump in her throat and rephrases the question. "Okay, why do you care?"

Luna smiles and releases her, leaning back in her chair with a satisfied look on her face. "You really do have no idea what's going on, do you?"

She stares at her, nonplussed as Luna stands and puts her cloak on.

"You're in over your head Hermione." She says in farewell. "I'd think twice before you fuck with another person's life."

Luna walks away and Hermione lowers her shaking gaze to the wooden table top in an effort to collect her shattered thoughts. She doesn't need to look up to see who has taken Luna's place.

"What do you want?" She grits out words from behind her teeth, eyes closing behind her hand.

She can feel his smirk boring into the side of her head and a rather large part of her wants to smack it off his face. The thought brings back a memory of the first time she smacked a smirk of a boy's face and the good memory calms her down a little.

He still hasn't said anything so she chances a look at him, knowing she's going to regret it afterwards. He's reclining as much as possible in the hard backed chair, one leg stretched underneath the table so that his shin is press against the back of her leg and the other bent, foot flat on the floor. His hands aren't propping up his face for once, they're relaxed on the arms of the chair, his eyes alight with mischief and staring at her steadily.

The game no longer feels as fun as it did ten minutes ago. It isn't a game of cat and mouse, the kind where she contemplates letting him charm his way into her bed and she pretends like she doesn't care. This new game feels heavy with unanswered questions, like he knows something she doesn't and she's struggling to keep up.

"What's going on?" She speaks quietly and without looking at him, her eyes are guarded, her hands folded on the table top. She's not on the offensive, she's retreated to guarding herself, protecting instead of demanding.

Sirius smiles even more widely and suddenly leans over to her, winding his hand into her hair behind her head, closing his fist tight. The grip he has on the silky strands doesn't hurt but it forces her to look up at him. His other hand cups her chin and squeezes, not to hurt, but to demonstrate the power behind his grip, the kind of power that she always underestimates.

"You're in over your head, little girl."

She fights the urge to break from his gasp in fear, forces herself to stay calm, even as the gap between their faces narrows. He leans in and flicks the tip of his tongue against the very corner of her mouth, exhaling against her lips. She waits for him to pull back, acting as if he is doing nothing out of the ordinary.

Completely ignoring the arousal that flared up in her belly at the feel of the wet drag of his tongue, she retorts with an easy arrogance that does nothing to belay the uneasy tension in the air.

"Of course I'm not, I'm Hermione Granger."

He laughs loudly, a bark that reminds her of his canine counterpart and sits back abruptly. The sigh of relief that leaves her when his hands release her head is short lived as his hand catches her wrist on his way back into his seat. He seems content to simply sit there and trace circles into her wrist instead of elaborating on the infuriating mind games that appeared to be going on around her.

"Would you like to tell me what the fuck is going on?" The harsh profanity surprises even her but Sirius merely smirks against the flushed skin of her wrist.

"Come home with me." He presses his lips against her throbbing pulse as soon as the last murmured syllable leaves his mouth.

"I live with you." Hermione tugs her wrist back and folds her arms again. "Of course I'll be coming home with you. Now tell me what is going on."

He smiles easily at her, his comfortable gaze not leaving her face, seemingly content to simply watch her rage build. Hermione has had enough.

"Maybe I'll slip inside your head whilst you're asleep." She hisses, leaning across the table to invade his personal space this time. His grin only widens.

"Come home with me."

"Stop saying that!" Her hand meets the table with a bang, disliking the feeling of not being able to decipher a riddle in front of her.

"Miss Granger." The curt words that interrupt their one sided spat sound sharp with disappointment.

Hermione meets Severus' icy gaze suddenly feeling incredibly foolish.

"Professor." She has to work very hard not to stammer in complete confusion. "What are you doing here?"

The potions master ignores her completely, turning his attention instead to Sirius who looks incredibly tense. The two seem to be having a silent conversation, one that she isn't privy to, one that she can't possibly hope to understand without help.

"I think I'll stay." Sirius leans back against his chair, one hand coming up to cradle his face, eyes not moving from staring at Snape who takes a seat opposite him, next to Hermione. It occurs to her that they were having some kind of argument inside one of their heads but she can't be bothered to attempt legilimency to find out.

"I don't care what either of you do, just as long as someone tells me what is going on!"

"Now now Kitten, don't get angry, I would hate for you to-" Hermione flicks her fingers and Sirius is cut off mid sentence due to the fact that his jaw is suddenly glued shut. Severus looks amused at Sirius' outraged expression but he wipes his expression clean when Hermione turns her attention on him.

"You'd better not be thinking of using that spell on me Miss Granger."

She ignores the threat in his voice. "Why are you here?"

Snape looks at her levelly for a second. "Mr Potter came to see me today."

Hermione rolls her eyes. "How dare he do something so heinous." Sirius snorts at her sarcasm, unable to say anything around her spell. Snape ignores them both.

"He wants lessons on occlumency."

"What?" Hermione is aware that beside her, Sirius has gone very still and avoids her gaze when she turns to look at him. "Sirius? Do you know something about this?"

He shrugs, not attempting to speak.

"In fact, I've had the pleasure of receiving all of your friends with similar requests." Snape continues speaking. "After the first two, I noticed a pattern and suggested that they see you instead."

"What did they say?" Hermione swallows thickly around the rising sense of dread.

"They made various excuses." Snape sniffed disdainfully. "Eventually Mr Weasley cracked. He said that asking you to teach them occlumency would be counter-productive to their intent."

"What does that even mean?!"

"It means, Miss Granger," Snape spoke uncharacteristically patiently. "that your friends are planning something against you."

Hermione twisted her wrist and Sirius' mouth unglued itself. "What is going on?" She demanded before he had a chance to complain.

He narrowed his eyes at her spitefully. "What makes you think I know anything?"

Another flick of her wrist and his right shoulder slipped out of its socket smoothly. Beside her, Snape flinched slightly at Sirius' quickly stifled howl of pain.

Ignoring the aghast gaze that was now digging into her skull from Snape, Hermione leaned over to Sirius in order to make sure he heard every hissed word over his own pained gasps. "They are planning something, and I want to know what it is. Now you have made it your own personal mission to torture me for past month so I know that there is no way they have hatched a plan without your help. Tell me what is going on or so help me, I will dig the information out of your skull with my fingernails!"

Sirius stared up at her with hate filled eyes, his head bowed from where he had curved his body around his injured shoulder. "And you wonder why your own friends are afraid of you."

"They aren't afraid of me."

He laughed through gritted teeth. "Of course they are. All of this? This is just an elaborate plot to bring you down."

Severus put a restraining hand on her arm as all the bones in Sirius' hand turned to powder.

"What plot? How far does this go?"

Sirius raised his head slightly to look her in the eyes, pain and hatred clouding his dark irises. "Why don't you take a look Princess?"


Two months ago.

"Harry Potter, would you please stop trying to kill your Godfather for two minutes!"

Harry looked up from where he and Sirius were entangled on the floor, not making a move to unwrap his fingers from around the other man's throat. "He slept with my fiancé! And your daughter! Shouldn't you be helping me get rid of the body?!"

Mrs Weasley sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Yes I know that, but I also know that it takes two to tango."

Harry glared at his godfather. "So he just gets away with it?"

"If I may-"

"No you may not." Luna's voice was surprisingly clear, the clarity shocking Sirius into silence and causing Harry to loosen his grip slightly. "I think we are missing the bigger picture here."

"Which is what exactly?" Mrs Weasley looked unhappy at being upstaged as the level headed one.

"That Hermione has once again interfered with our lives and I'm not convinced she did it using legal methods."

Silence greeted her latest theory.

"That's absurd."

"Don't be ridiculous Luna."

"I don't see why that means I shouldn't kill him."

"Shut up." Luna snapped over the medley of voices. "Look, just last week she used that weirdo spell to make that reporter forget about all that stuff he found out about my Father betraying you guys. And then there's that thing about how none of us can remember what she was doing for that gap year she took before she started working at the ministry. And she manages to convince people to leave the country whenever they wrong any of us."

"Yeah, but Luna," Ron spoke slowly as if addressing a two year old. "All that stuff was to help us. And we don't have proof that she tampered with our memories."

"She's still meddling with our lives without asking!" Luna fired back. "And you have to admit that some of it could be with dark magic."

"So, what are you saying?" Harry released Sirius and stood up. "That she's looking inside our heads and fixing our lives with illegal spells?"

"yep."

Sirius snorted. "I don't think she has the imagination, or the balls, to do anything that interesting Lovegood."

Luna glared at him. "Okay then, how did she find out about you and Ginny? I'm assuming you didn't tell her."

"No, she overheard us ending it."

"When?"

"Last Friday, just after lunch." Sirius nervously shifted away from his Godson who had clenched his fists angrily.

"See, there's the problem Sirius." Luna smiled triumphantly. "Hermione was with me all day last Friday. We didn't get back here until just before dinner."

Sirius stared at her. "So, what, you think that she looked inside my head without me realising?"

"Are you telling me that she's never looked you in the eye for a long time? That you've never had a sudden headache after being in the same room as her for a long time?"

Sirius looked away and everyone else in the room suddenly looked a little uncomfortable.

"I'm right aren't I?" Luna looked gleeful. "You've all experienced a similar thing, and then later, Hermione pops up knowing something about you that you've never told her."

"What are you suggesting we do?" It was Neville that spoke up this time. "We can't just confront her without evidence."

"Then we set a trap." Luna sounded like she had been thinking about this for a while. "One of us think about doing something horrible, and then we see if she a) finds out and b) does anything about it."

"That's your brilliant plan?" Sirius asked scathingly. "To think bad thoughts and not only let the cleverest witch of your generation take a peak, but also hope that she doesn't see this conversation at the same time, and then monologues her evil plan to subdue us?"

Luna shrugged. "She'd never suspect."

"Yeah, because it's stupid."

"Who did you have in mind?" Harry ignored the incredulous look his godfather was giving him and focused his attention on Luna.

"Well, I was actually hoping Sirius could do it."

"yeah, dream on blondie." Sirius folded his arms looking bored.

"Think of it as payback for her outing you to Harry!" Luna snapped back at him. "Besides, you're the one with the most secrets, and everyone knows that the veil/prison thing screwed you up a bit."

Sirius clenched his jaw but his angry retort was interrupted by Ron. "So, you're asking us to lie to our friend, my girlfriend, because you have a hunch that she's using dark magic to invade our privacy?"

"Ron," Luna sounded gentle all of a sudden. "We all know you're gay." Ron flushed an ugly colour.

"What are talk-"

"And you can bet Hermione knows too." Luna carried on, despite the confused atmosphere. "So why hasn't she broken up with you? What is she planning?"

There was silence that followed this revelation.

"Okay, I'll do it." Sirius said at last. "But only if you people stop harping on about the fact that I'm a terrible person."

There were mutters of agreement from everyone in the room.

"Right." There was a gleam in Luna's eye. "This is what I suggest you do-"


Sirius yelped as Hermione withdrew from his mind too quickly. She stared at him in horror, the weight of the last few weeks finally settling.

"You tricked me."

Sirius chuckled low in his throat. "All this time, you thought that I was the big bad, the one posing the threat to the world. Wrong again Princess. It's always been you. All that stuff about what you saw in my head, the lengths you went to to provide me with my own personal brothel, it was all for nothing. All subterfuge to see if you were manipulating us. And you never suspected, so caught up in the game, in your own intelligence, you never stopped to wonder if it was all real."

Hermione sat back, blood draining from her face. "So what now? Your plan worked, but what are you going to do about it?"

Sirius frowned. "We haven't got that far." He admitted.

Hermione scoffed, screwing her face up in disgust. Her fingers curled around the air and Sirius' boned slid back into place. "Get out."

Surprisingly, he didn't argue, he simply nodded at Snape before standing up and leaving. Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes closed in despair at her own stupidity. Sighing, she opened her eyes and turned to Snape, only to find herself staring down a wand pointed directly between her eyes.

"Now Miss Granger." Snape was breathing shallowly, eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Wherever did you learn a spell like that?"


Uhoh, Hermione appears to have shot herself in the foot. Too much dark magic will do that to a person.

What do think? Are the threads coming together? More loose ends to come. And the obligatory rough sex scene of course.

Who suspected? Come one, tell me how transparent my plot lines are.

Nixon.