AN: I'm backkkkk! Sorry for yet another long wait, but life is crazy and as much as I love writing and sharing with you guys sometimes it's insanity and mine get in the way a little, haha (3lw shyly hides behind a curtain of her hair, which is coincidently a mop of riotous curls suitable to rivaling even Hermione Grangers wild tresses). Anyway she's finally awake from her crippling depression and I had a lot of fun writing this; I hope you do the same reading it! Stuffs going to start going down soon and were really going to be getting into some Sirius action and drama in the coming chapters so I'm hyped, hehe (grins mischeviously)… Enjoy!
Warning: I still suck at poof reading
Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling so I own nothing, Not Harry Potter and not anything else… yeah I'm realllll broke
Chapter twelve: Stage 6: The Upward Swing
She looked awful, Hermione thought as she regarded her haggard appearance in the mirror for the first time in weeks, apparently grief was a powerful thing as this was the second time in a glaringly short time frame that Hermione had gone radio silent for time unending. Her hair had become an oil filled mess that rivaled that of her loathsome potions Professor, Snape during her perpetual hiatus from consciousness; not that she would point the cosmetically and hygienically challenged aspects of his mien out to the apathetic man; hated, deceitful, betraying murders or not Hermione was, for the most part, not inclined towards blatantly disrespecting the adults and authorities in her life. When the situation called for it she could be much more discreet in her vengeance-even if the offender deserved nothing less than a transparent display of her disregard- she was a Gryffindor true enough, but she could still be sly when provoked. She may be a lion and there may be times that she would roar and throw about her considerable strength as a wildland queen, but she could also stalk her prey before she pounced when circumstances required; and that snake of a man would inherently reply better to an underhanded assault on his character than an angered declaration of his being a 'greasy git,' at this point he reveled in such accusations as his chance to bring about a multitude of Gryffindor detentions; besides, while those descriptors were apt enough, he was much worse than such petty, childhood insults now… plus at this point Hermione could be called greasy in a way as well and that made it far from enough to define the callous depravity of the cunning bat of the dungeons.
Looking back in the mirror after her disparaging recollection of her much hated former professor she saw for the first time- despite her initial musings attesting to the unpleasant surprise felt at her own obvious deterioration- how truly appalling she looked. Upon her further observation, in the end, though her hair, matted and greased as it was, certainly posed an unappealing problem, it was the utter deadness in her eyes that most disturbed her. She stared at her visage in mortified wonderment as she asked herself, Have I really let myself fall this far? Have I really let myself forget my promises to Sirius, my Sirius? My promises to Harry and myself?
She frowned as she poked at her checks and pulled down at the skin of her lower eyelids as if to check and see if the wrecked girl reflected in the mirror was really there, was really her. Yup, the vacant eyed, shattered reflection of woman copied her motions and she wistfully wished it was simply a fragmented mirror that made her seem so broken.
Hermione slapped water into her grieving face, a countenance taut with remorse. Poor Pippsy, the witch thought as she went in pursuit of her tooth brush, digging through the bottomless beaded bag that held the only material possessions she brought along into her new reality, I must have been a nightmare to care for and she must have so many responsibilities already. Hermione couldn't bear the thought of being the reason for one of the sweet little creatures' she championed for overworking themselves, she resolved that as soon as she was cleaned up she would do something to assist the little elf, even if it was just cleaning her room she had to get her metaphorical shit together; not that she would generally use such language to call it as such but if the shoe fits...
As Hermione reveled in the cool mint sensation of a post brushing swish of mouthwash she turned to start a near scolding shower, hoping the skin reddening heat would burn away not just the abundance of grime accumulated on her physical person, but that thickly layered dirt which was mounted on her spirit as well.
She sighed in momentary pleasure at the soothing feel of her favorite raspberry crème scented soap running down her skin in a waterfall of fragrant suds, she rejoiced in her fleeting folly of packing such luxuries when planning a trip of flight, when she was on the run from the darkest of dark wizards, Voldemort. Well, when thought about logically she supposed it was actually a trip in search of Voldemort more so then away from him, their quest after all was to find him, or rather pieces of him and his tainted soul through the appalling, essence protecting horcruxs he'd created; but they were also trying to hide from him and his brownnosing little henchmen as well, so perhaps they were technically still on the run? The situation was really quite convoluted and, as her creamy, scented soap and all of its comforts cascaded in suds down her body, she smiled forlornly as such irrationally packed frivolities temporarily allowed her to forget where she really was. Hermione thought she must sound extremely ridiculous with the small, little moans she emitted while massaging her Honeysuckle Shampoo into her scalp, but she didn't have the energy to care as her mind was floating in a land of physicality that gave thoughts of emotion or mentality no measure of importance.
Her luxurious escape under the torrent of her sudsy, gushing showered waterfall was a short one, she mused that she could've stayed under it massaging deluge forever if it weren't for the sirens call her melody of pleasurable, guttural resonances in response proved to be for a certain canine leaning marauder. Or perhaps he thought of it more as the wail of an enraged banshee as his first word upon wrenching open the bath's door was, "Oh, can it already Marlene!," the man demanded irately, "I already told you last night that I didn't want to go another round, with you anyway," the astronomically dubbed dog star murmured distractedly in a corrective afterthought, "a quick fuck is all I needed and I told you that last night when you tried to get me to stick around afterward. You following me home with this whole needy stalker routine is getting old, one day I find you naked on the breakfast table saying you were my next meal and now you're in here beckoning like a two knut harlot on a slow night, give it a rest already or are you really that desperate," Sirius Black sneers in annoyance as he yanks at the showers oceanic themed paisley curtain in a harsh tug.
~o~O~o~
Sirius awoke with a serious -pun obviously intended, he was a marauder after all- case of morning wood, this wasn't unusual, especially of late with his recurring dreams of a witch with luscious coffee and chestnut curls and eyes more intoxicating then the richest of whiskeys writhing in wanton bliss beneath him, but he'd thought he'd worked the issue out with the good hard fuck he'd given his longtime 'booty call,' as the muggles called it, last night. The gorgeous, shapely little witch was making the most enticing of noises as she drew his prick deeper into her tightly clenching inner walls, the impiously gratifying mews seemed so real to life as she pushed her ample bosom invitingly up to him in lustful abandon. Her desirous moans were a near tangible song of harmonizing passion that stayed with him even after his eyes had opened and cleared of the inevitable daze of post slumber. He soon discovered why this was as the fog cleared further and he realized that these swooning sighs were happening in real time, in this very house, in the loo down the hall, and they were unerringly calling to him… and then they were angering him.
He knew it couldn't be Lily and James having an early morning romp in the shower as James was away on order business, and aside from that he knew Lily's grunts of gratification were much less demure then the ones heard now, very fitting of her fiery and unyielding personality; you better believe that with years of experience as the roommate of the much enamored James Potter's he was very familiar with both those grunts, and that personality. So with Lily nixed from his list of subjects there could only be one culprit left, clearly Marlene was back to her obsessive tendencies and was trying to seduce him once again; after all the only other two people in the house baring the genitalia required to make such sounds were either too old from him to even consider capable of arousal, and on second thought, also possessing of their own, private, ensuite, or, in the hurricane's case, too bundled in a catatonic lump down the hall to be making such sounds. Sirius may be known to think with his indefatigable cock often but he refused to let it run his life, especially where this incomprehensive witch was concerned, when would she learn that she had no claim to him? Perhaps a clarifying dose of early morning embarrassment would do the trick? Or maybe not, he was quite the attractively addicting sexual specimen after all.
Determination shined in his stormy grey eyes as he marched from his room to burst in on the noisy shower temptress, he would teach her to mess with the mind of Sirius Black if it was the last thing he ever managed in his earthly life. "Oh, can it already Marlene! I already told you last night that I didn't want to go another round, with you anyway," he raged with scorn in his seamlessly sickened voice, "a quick fuck is all I needed and I told you that last night when you tried to get me to stick around afterward. You following me home in this whole needy stalker routine is getting quite old, one day I find you naked on the breakfast table saying you were my next meal and now you're in here beckoning like a two knut harlot on a slow night, give it a rest already! Or are you really that desperate?"
As he pulled harshly on the showers modesty drapes his jaw drops in shock as before him stood not Marlene McKinnon, but the brunette goddess that had been haunting his dreams, the goddess whose presence he refused to acknowledge in wakefulness. The suds running enthrallingly down her luscious curves captured his undivided attention as she stood stark and surprised before his roving gaze, his wandering eyes were quickly drawn elsewhere as the witch, who had now recovered enough to assimilate herself to her surroundings and the circumstances behind them to become incensed, moved quickly. A wave of her hand had the cleansing stream of her relaxing wash ceasing and a fluffy red towel twinning around her enrapturing body. "You're not Marlene," he muttered dumbly, something he'd likely slap himself for later.
She commanded he concentrate his lasciviously peripatetic considerations elsewhere as her hair crackled with unrestrained wrath fueled energy and her eyes of the most potent brown liquor blazed in their incendiary ire. "Obviously," she acknowledged before practically growling at him to, "Get out of the bathroom," and he denied his inclination to declare her gesture rather cute, if not obsolete, when she had to incline her head a considerable bit to meet his gaze and had her tiny, little fists balled against her towel covered hips in an adorable display of indignation that was not at all intimidating. No, he was Sirius Black, he did not use such labels as 'cute' or 'adorable,' sexy and hot were his drinks of choice; he treaded towards the more erogenous side of adjective use.
Sirius' chuckle was unbidden as his amused gaze met her livid one, "and what will you do if I don't," he taunted mirthfully.
Her furious eyes narrowed as she glared at him, "I'll hex you into oblivion of course, I was having a perfectly good wash until you interrupted, thank you," she stated matter-of-factly.
"You and what wand," Sirius smirked.
"Well certainly not the one you're pointing at me," she seethed, indicating his engorged lower zone. "Though you may not have noticed with your concentration focused elsewhere, but there is such a thing as wandless magic, a concept I'm quite familiar with as it stands; or did you're posturing prick have you missing out on those school lessons as well?"
The dark haired animagus barked a harsh and now most certainly unamused snigger as he raised his heckles in return, "don't flatter yourself pet, you are no distraction to me, it takes a special kind of woman to prove such a temptation. Perhaps there was one in my class on wandless magic," he pondered aloud, "but I find I learn quite well on my own," with that announcement, a grandiose flick of the wrist, and a cocky wink, he had her intricately wrapped towel dress cover disappearing as he sauntered from the stream filled room leaving the gapping witch behind; her mouth opening and closing like a fish as her justifiably fury addled brain came up empty of retort.
Her head shook as she physically cleared it of its enraged fog, uncaring of her indecently exposed body, he'd clearly already seen it all anyway, she unabashedly stalked after him, "get back here you mangy mutt, or I'll fill you're room with a barrage of wiz-bangs sufficient to flattening the Himalayas and put enough little pet snakes in your boots to make even Woody the Cowboy shiver," she screeched.
What's a wiz-bang and who the fuck is Woody the Cowboy, Sirius wonders but outwardly he heckled, "so now you want me to see you naked, chasing after me like the lusty whore you are; no woman can resist Sirius Black," he announced in a manner that sounded nearly resigned.
Angry tears cloud Hermione's eyes but she refuses their falling as she rants back, "I have no clue who this apparent 'Marlene' character is but I feel sorry for her, you're an arrogant philanderer who goes wherever his ravening little prig leads and if she wants to 'go another round' with a man, I'm sorry, boy, like that she's obviously either stupid, deluded, or a few pebbles short of a gobstones set; believe that if I was a 'lusty whore' none of that lust would be directed toward a degenerate pig like you."
Sirius is silent as the door to the room he was known to slyly peek through for a surreptitious, disavowed check after its silent inhabitant, slams in his face, he growls his dissatisfaction as the stomp of his receding footsteps precede the slamming of his own door.
He didn't know in whom he was most frustrated with, in himself, for making her cry those fuming little tears he saw her rebuke from dripping out of the glistening pools they called home in the corners of her clouded eyes, or in her, for her for making him care, despite his adamant denials of doing such, about the fact that she had tears in her eyes…
Scratch that he was definitely more frustrated with her, he could write his caring off as his Order borne duty, as she was essentially his latest charge -what with the strange circumstances surrounding her arrival and Dumbledore's assigning her to the very safe house in which he resided, thus naming him responsible for seeing to her safely arriving there-, but what he couldn't write off was the way she managed to infuriatingly wriggle her way under his skin, infuriating him with their every interaction. That was all her and it was all vexatious, all predisposing to his desire to hate her.
She was standoffish, with him more so than anyone, polite and courteous enough when exchanging pleasantries, amusing and lovely even, when she was alert enough to the world around her to be so, but the second one looked deeper you could see some form of deception swirling in her whiskey depths, and the moment you brought attention to that deceit the silence started. She retreated into herself after ragging, usually at him, as he was the only one to see past her shy smiles and insufferable 'amnesia' routine, and becoming a shell of herself; a catatonic cocoon of blankets and the innately entrenched despair he'd apparently dredged up from her. She looked at him as if she knew him at times, times that looked as if she lamented this ostensible familiarity as her eyes held such a deep-seated sorrow that he couldn't help but recoil from it. How could he evoke such powerful feelings of regret in a women of whom he had no memory? Surely he would remember someone he'd impacted so? Her seeming knowledge of him was a source of extreme discomfort for him, a war was not a time for one to be confused or lacking in an understanding that, to all appearances, seemed distinctly important. What made it worse was that on some instinctual level he did recognize her, as if his heart his soul, his very being was trying to remember a meeting that never came to pass and it was tearing him apart.
So of course her duplicity was a source of his potent loathing. That and her magnetizing, unrelenting abilities to enrapture him, consequently achieving the previously undone, and thought impossible, task of holding his attraction for more than five minutes. Sure he'd been known to chase around a good romp in the sack with a few prudish bitties that gave him a run for his money, he did so love a challenge, but the second he'd given the arrogant beauties that thought themselves immune to his charms a good hard screwing his fascination was gone. He kept a few of the more talented witches on as fuck buddies but that was as far as their allure took him, there wiles attracted him nowhere beyond a sexual level.
But this witch, Hermione Granger, awoke a desire to protect in him, a desire to mark and own and know ever crevice of her body mind and soul. It was something in her eyes, they pulled him in a way he'd never been pulled. Called him in a way he'd never been called. The swirling brown hues awoke a warmth similar yet different to the one he felt when around his Marauder family and the honorary parents he had in Dorea and Charlus Potter; a warmth similar yet different to what he felt when he thought of the fond early memories he had of his young, now despised brother. Had he not known better he would say those feeling were love, but Sirius Black did not love, not when he didn't have to, not in the romantic sense of the word; it only opened you to hurt and Sirius certainly had enough of that without letting some doe-eyed slip of a women into his life… This meaning he especially didn't love curly haired hurricanes that blew into his life on the tailwinds of lies and secrecy to take over its every aspect; no he hated those kinds of storms, no matter how beautiful they were.
I hope you enjoyed the latest chapter of TDA, let me know what ya think, scold me for the wait whatever, but please stay tuned and remember that I love you for even taking a few minutes out of your day to read this story, or rather outlet for all of my crazy… ;) Hope to see you next chapter!
Love,
3lw