Thank you so much for your lovely reviews! I really appreciate them, love knowing that I'm satisfying expectations ;)
"Nice." He compliments her quietly, not removing his eyes from the now closed door. This is their thing. They look at each other without speaking, or they speak without looking at each other.
Not that they ever say anything when they do talk.
"What?" She's deliberately keeping this conversation vague and shallow. Making him spell out every thought to save the effort of having to read the meaning behind them herself. Interpretation is for friends.
"A swift change of subject, some righteous indignation, a touch of beautifully executed forgiving benevolence-"
"Get to the point Dickens."
"You made him completely forget the position he found you in, and the Scooby gang is reunited once more." He smirked at her out of the corner of his eye. "I didn't even hear you say sorry."
"Get off your high horse Harry, Luna told me what you guys did." Hermione broke the silence calmly, not breaking eye contact even when Harry's expression widened in shock. She sighed as his face darkened slightly, realising that she wouldn't get through to him on the defensive. She could feel Sirius' presence outside the kitchen door, acutely aware that her performance had an audience she thought she had banished to the study.
Hermione leaned over and touched his hand gently. "Don't you think you over-reacted a bit Harry?"
He shrugged and had the decency to look slightly ashamed. "We weren't trying to hurt you Hermione," Harry spoke slowly as if he was only just thinking about it. "we were just – well, we were scared I s'pose."
"Scared?" Hermione's eyebrows jumped to the top of her head. "Of me?"
"It's just…" Harry rubbed the back of his neck and looked uncomfortable. "we never see you anymore, now that you work for the ministry doing…" He paused. "…whatever it is you do. And then you turn around and do something as shit scary as wiping people's memories and sending them out of the country."
A lump formed in Hermione's throat at the sad look in Harry's eyes. She squeezed his hand tenderly. "I never wanted to hurt, or scare, any of you." She explained earnestly. "I honestly was just trying to protect you." She looked down again as she thought about her past actions. "I guess I did maybe take a bit too much pleasure in it, but you have to believe me, I wasn't trying to ruin any of your lives."
"I don't have anything to be sorry for."
They never talk. They never say anything. Even now, standing side by side in the cramped hallway inches apart, the words flying between them may as well have been incantations. They attack, they fight, they pose challenges, they threaten. Sometimes they flirt. They never talk.
"You nearly did."
"Hermione." Harry turned his hand palm up to squeeze her hand in his. She fought down a flinch as the gesture reminded her of Sirius and their conversation a few weeks prior. "I know that what we did, tricking you like that, was incredibly out of line – certainly not what friends should do, and I want you to know that I am so sorry for that. But, all of the people that we've seen that have been… tempted by the dark arts, can you understand why we may have gone a bit over board on the defensive?"
Hermione felt a sudden rush of sympathy towards her friend who, despite his faults, had lived through so much in his short life already. "Harry," She smiled warmly. "I love you for your concern, I really do, but, you have to remember, we're all a little rough around the edges. I don't think anyone comes out the other side of the war without some dark in them. But there's light too, and it's our actions that define us."
He stared at her. "Someone else said that to me once."
She brushed it off. "I had such good intentions Harry, even if my methods were a little… messy. Maybe next time just give me a nudge? Don't go all mind games on me?"
He smiled. "Yeah… yeah, of course."
She laughed elatedly, feeling as though a huge weight had been lifted, like she could go out without looking over her shoulder. Standing up, she came around the table. "Come here you." Enveloping her child-hood friend in a hug, she heard the door slam and a light pair of feet click down the hallway.
Harry broke away from her, grinning like a twelve year old just presented with their first broom, eyes flicking over her shoulder in recognition. She turned in time to see Luna give her mussed, bedraggled appearance a disdainful onceover, pale eyebrows raised mockingly.
Hermione flicked her fingers surreptitiously by her side , making Harry jump as his wand shrieked and emitted red sparks.
"Auror Emergency!" Harry announced cheerfully, striding across the room and giving Hermione a loud kiss on the cheek as he exited the room. "Bye 'Mione, Luna.." The front door slammed, echoing through the cold kitchen.
"I have to applaud you Hermione, there aren't many people who could slip their way out of a situation like that."
Hermione squared up to the blonde witch, not liking the silky edges of the tone she was using.
"What's your trick?" Luna half smiled icily. "Tiny memory charm? Casual unforgiveable curse? Magical contract?" She dragged the syllables out, clicking the last 'c' on the roof of her mouth.
"Have I upset you Luna?" Hermione kept her tone steady. "I have a feeling this hostility is nothing to do with Ginny or Pansy. You see-" Luna shifted to the right, and anticipating her move Hermione moved to the left, not allowing the shorter girl to circle her. "-you just intruded on what was obviously a reconciliation. The only natural deduction would be that I have apologised, confessed, and made my peace with Harry. Why hasn't the Cold War ended?"
"You're dabbling in the dark arts, Hermione." Luna curled her lip unattractively. "The war's never over for Death Eaters."
Rage brushed through her veins at Luna's careless words. An unfamiliar emotion curled a fist around her vocal chords, her words shaking as she spat them across the small area of no mans land between them.
"I have a constant reminder that I could never be a Death Eater." She raised her forearm in a tightly controlled motion. "I believe you were there when I got this actually."
Luna had the grace to look slightly ashamed in the face of the scarred, white letters carved into her skin, but it did nothing for the hatred crawling up the older woman's spine.
"I would like to think there's more than blood standing between you and evil." Although Luna's response was quiet, it remained venomous.
Hermione tutted admonishingly. "Lots of things can drive a person to do terrible things Luna." Her tone had become mocking, she had started circling, releasing her tight grasp on emotions. "Pain. Fear. Love."
"Love doesn't entice acts of cruelty." Luna snapped, finally realising how precarious her position was.
Hermione came to a stop in front of her and looked mock-thoughtful for a few seconds. "hmmmm, let's see…" She spoke slowly before holding up an index finger and brightening, a crude mimicry of enlightenment. "I remember a man, nice, kind, believed in things that no one else did. Stood strong in the face of doubt and unkindness. Until one day, someone took something away from him, something that he loved. A good person would of course mourn the loss, but bear it for the sake of the greater good. A good person would have done the right thing."
She stepped closer. "Do you know what he did Luna?"
Luna dared her to say it, her spine stiff with coiled tension.
She leaned closer. "He sold the saviour of the wizarding world to the death eaters in exchange for you."
"You bitch-" Luna had only held her wand in the offensive position for two seconds before Hermione's reflexes had flung it across the room. Panting slightly in rage, the two women faced each other, one defenceless and one holding the exact incantation to reduce the other to dust on the tip of her tongue. Anger was still coursing through her, her fingertips twitched as Hermione formed the shape of the first syllable ever so slightly.
Out of nowhere, Sirius' hand curled around her arm, his eyes meeting hers. He shook his head in warning, silently telling her not to do it, as though he had read her mind. She stared at him, unaware of Luna's palpable relief and confusion, taking calming breathes to the feel of his surprisingly gentle touch on her arm.
"I wouldn't have hurt her that badly." Half an inch to the left and they would be touching again. Arm to arm, the backs of her fingers touching his, his body heat soothing away her goosebumps. Or perhaps intensifying them. She shook the thought away.
"You would have destroyed her."
She snorted. "Any sane person would have reacted exactly the same way I did."
He turned to look her properly, her elbow brushing his shirt fractionally when she instinctively folded her arms. "Any sane person wouldn't have succeeded."
"Are you suggesting that I'm insane?"
He smiled slightly, not a smirk, but a genuine expression of amusement. "I'm suggesting that I enjoy sullying my hardwood floors too much to allow you to be carted off to Azkaban."
She laughed suddenly and briefly, a soft sound that reflected a degree of surprise, as though she had forgotten she could laugh.
It faded gently into the corners of her eyes as she voiced her next words, her end of the peace treaty that inherent in this strange, short truce.
"The girls are an illusion you know. It's all in your head."
His eyes crinkled, "I know, Skat. Believe it or not, I can tell the difference between real sex, and sex that only happens in my head."
She filed away the unfamiliar word for later. "You knew? And you didn't care?"
He shrugged, running a hand over his head, messing up his hair in an uncharacteristically shy gesture. "Maybe I was just messing with you when I showed you the inside of my head."
"I can tell the difference between a dream and a piece of imagination." She turned slowly to face him full on, uncrossing her arms hesitantly. She had kicked her shoes off several moments before and the height difference, along with her tangled appearance, gave her an unfamiliar sense vulnerability.
He said nothing, simply continued to watch her, engaged in the talking they were suddenly doing.
"You know I wouldn't have fallen for your little coup d'etat unless what I saw was real." She smiled humourlessly. "That's why you agreed to be bait, isn't it? You wanted me to look inside your head and tell if you if you're a danger to people."
He focused on her hair instead, running his fingers through the havoc their earlier activities had created, tucking a wayward curl behind her ear.
"Why didn't you just ask me?"
He ignored her question, slipping his fingers along her shoulder blade, his thumb gently tracing the purple mark on her neck his arm had left. Barely breathing, she kept very, very still.
"You never told me to stop."
She swallowed against his thumb., abandoning her attempt at a serious conversation "I didn't want you to."
He moved closer, sliding his other hand into her hair, still maintaining the fragile pressure.
"You aren't going to end up like that." The volume of her whisper dropped and became more husky as the space between their faces began to vanish.
"I-" He looked pained when his mouth opened to form the sentence, a desperate and lost expression in his eyes that made her want to break their eye contact, and never look at him again.
Just as her fingertips were microns away from his skin, she felt the a brush of foreign magic ease through the wards, signalling that someone had just apparated into the hallway.
Sirius' hand suddenly tightened in her hair before his touch was gone completely and three feet of cold distance flooded the gap between them.
"I do hope I'm not interrupting anything…"
"Actually, Yes." Sirius grated out. "We were having a moment."
"Shut up Sirius." Hermione shoved past him to see who had just arrived, the figure mostly obscured by the gloom of the hallway. "Sorry, who is it?"
The person moved forward slowly and Hermione had four seconds to look down the end of a wand before her wards shuddered and filled the hallway with a blinding light.
Then everything went black.