AN:AHHHHH I am so excited to bring this to you guys, but so sorry it has taken so long! Happy to be back and here to provide some (much overdue, I'm sorry) reading material during your self quarantine. Hope you guys and your families are staying safe during this weird, scary time! I like this chap, it's got a few surprises, including a surprising amount of references to 1950's American movie stars…. Hope you guys like it and that it was worth the long wait! Much love y'all.
Chapter 25: In Which Hermione Weighs her options (Enter Amos Diggory)
Hermione had always been a girl capable of biding her time; possessed of a willingness and patience to wait things out and play the long game if such an option were the most strategically advantageous. But even she could admit that she'd been slow to act on the information she'd learned from Hagrid the previous summer about Professor Slughorn and a certain darkly precocious Slytherin student he'd once had, intriguing though it was.
The first few months of her 5th year passed by in a flurry of homework, supplemental OWL preparation, and the occasional Hogsmeade visit, until suddenly it was late November and Hermione realized she hadn't given the matter serious thought in weeks. Between revising for her OWLS (which, even for a girl as academically inclined as Hermione, was still quite a daunting matter), worrying over Lucius Malfoy and whatever the hell happened to be wrong with Mary McDonald, and how either of those two things might relate concerningly to her, Hermione had a lot to contend with this year already, never mind fretting over what Professor Slughorn might have been up to 30 odd years ago.
There was also, of course, the nagging mystery of Sirius Black and his as of yet unproven guilt or innocence. If Hermione was honest with herself, she'd long ago abandoned even the pretense of a belief that Black might have been capable of murdering Peter Pettigrew and a flock of innocent, Muggle bystanders in the middle of a busy London street. Whatever Black's faults may have been, and they were not, to Hermione's mind, entirely insignificant flaws, she could not imagine him ever committing such an act. But her determination of Black's lack of culpability presented Hermione with an entirely new set of questions to frustrate her, beginning with what had actually happened that day in 1981 (or rather, what would happen, she corrected herself absently) and who, if not Black, was responsible for it.
The most logical conclusion, if one believed that Black was innocent, which Hermione now did, was that someone had sought to frame him, and had succeeded in doing so with aplomb. But who, and why? Various members of Black's family came to mind as potential suspects, but Hermione wasn't sure that quite fit. Afterall, why would anyone in the Black family have wanted to kill Peter Pettigrew in 1981? Had he merely been a casualty they saw as expendable; negligible collateral damage in their effort to exact revenge on their wayward Black sheep of an heir? Or had Pettigrew been a target as well, Hermione wondered. Had someone, for some reason, actually wanted to kill him specifically? Hermione couldn't imagine why. Certainly, Pettigrew was annoying; or at least Hermione herself personally found him quite odious. But she could hardly imagine the boy engendering a strong enough reaction in anyone that they would wish to murder him. Any reason for Pettigrew to have been an intentional target of what would happen in 1981 completely eluded Hermione.
Back when she'd thought Black had done it, Pettigrew's murder had made a sick kind of sense. The two boys were friends, and people were most often murdered by those that they knew. It had been easy to surmise that Pettigrew might have discovered Black's true colors, his allegiance to Voldemort, confronted him, and been cut down by Black in the process. Of course, this theory, which Hermione had postulated well before getting to really know either of the two boys involved in it, she dismissed as laughably ridiculous now that she did have some intimation of their personalities and personal relationship. Pettigrew would no sooner confront Black about anything of great importance than he would have eaten his own shoe. The fact of the matter was that nothing made sense now that she was certain Black was innocent, and Hermione was beginning to lose hope that it ever would.
Her desire to investigate the relationship between Professor Slughorn and Tom Riddle, as Voldemort had been known when Slughorn taught him, seemed like a much more potentially productive prospect than continuing to ruminate endlessly on what would happen between Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew and a street full of Muggles in six years' time. After all, it was much easier to speculate on that which had already happened, than it was that which had yet to occur. Hermione doubted Professor Dumbledore would be very pleased with her should he come to find out that she was intent on prying into the life of his esteemed Head of Slytherin House in the hopes of unveiling potentially murky secrets, though. Which is why she had no plans on telling the Headmaster about any her various activities when she was next summoned to his office, whenever that happened to be. If Hermione played her cards right, her careful discretion would render Dumbledore's presumed recriminations of her behavior a moot point.
Though one hadn't yet been called, Hermione sensed a meeting with the Headmaster was imminent. Luckily, she'd become quite good at the art of dissembling since her arrival in the 1970's, and she didn't' actually think Dumbledore would use legilimency on her. Not if she didn't give him a reason to, and not if he didn't want to find out a great deal of information which he'd have a very difficult time not acting on. Hermione doubted the Headmaster would make such a tactical error. The muggleborn witch was prepared to deal with Dumbledore when the time came, but presently she had other concerns; her business with Slughorn foremost among them. Recently though, especially since the advent of her 16th birthday a few months previously, a smaller, more personal concern had begun to edge it's way into Hermione's thoughts; her dating life, or rather, the noted lack thereof.
Under normal circumstances, had she never traveled back in time, Hermione doubted she would have been overly concerned with dating at this point in her life. It was her OWL year, and her coursework was obviously paramount. Besides which, she would have had plenty of time, a lifetime, in which to date later on. Except Hermione's circumstances were not normal, and the "lifetime" she had left was potentially limited to a mere four more years, should the birth of her other self in 1979 cause the self she currently embodied to be flung to previously unknown corners of the space time continuum. And while it may have seemed trivial, Hermione was no longer sure she was willing to vanish off the face of the planet without having ever even kissed a boy.
Well, the Gryffindor witch amended, it wasn't entirely true that she had never kissed a boy; she had, in fact, kissed both Remus Lupin and Sirius Black on the cheek. But in both instances the kisses had been quick and platonic affairs, similar to the way Hermione sometimes bestowed innocent pecks on Lily and Dorcas' cheeks, though there tended to be less stubble involved when she did this with her girlfriends. Both kisses with the Marauder's had been borne as a desire on Hermione's part to comfort or apologize in some measure, not driven by anything so unmistakable (if the novels were to believed anyway) as lust or romantic passion. To Hermione's mind, such activities hardly counted. It simply wasn't what she meant when she said she wanted to kiss a boy.
The trouble was that Hermione hadn't the first clue to going about getting what she actually did want. It wasn't that she was socially incompetent or oblivious to how these things were supposed to go, but her situation was somewhat complicated. Was it really fair to date someone, to form a committed relationship with an individual and develop any kind of significant feelings for them, knowing that she might simply fall off the face of the earth in four years' time with no way of warning her partner? What if they fell in love with her, and then one day she was just gone? How could Hermione dothat to another person? The muggle born wasn't even sure if it were possible to conceive of forming an attachment to someone here in the past as anything but an untenably selfish act on her part. With her possible looming expiration date, even the most seemingly simple aspects of living her life in the past ended up miring her in ethical quandary, Hermione reflected with a detached sense of frustration. It was really quite exhausting.
"The problem," Dorcas said later, Hermione having somewhat reluctantly decided to consult the blonde for advice on the one topic which it was moderately safe for her to openly inquire about; boys, "is that your making this far more complicated than it has to be."
Hermione frowned, skeptical but willing to listen. Afterall, it was a foolish proposition to seek advice if you weren't willing to at least consider taking it, and there was a reason she had gone to Dorcas about this matter rather than Lily; mainly the blonde's vastly more extensive experience in dealing with the opposite sex. "How so?" the muggleborn inquired after a moment, her expression confused.
Dorcas lent forward. "Dating doesn't have to be some vast, emotional undertaking where you form irrevocable, life-long bonds with everyone you happen to go to Madam Puddifoot's with, Hermione. You can just do it for fun."
"I have no desire to go to Madam Puddifoot's ever. With anyone," Hermione said flatly.
Dorcas rolled her eyes, tossing a sheet of long, blonde hair over one shoulder; she tended to fling her mane about even more than usual when she was exasperated. "The bookshop then! You're missing the point, Hermione. We're only 16! It's just dating, they're just boys! Believe me, most of them are hardly looking to sign up for a lifelong commitment, either. Well, Potter and Snape might be," she amended, waving a dismissive hand, as though to immediately swat away these two prominent examples of young, obsessive love as completely irrelevant. "But only with Lils. I guess she just has that effect on people. Maybe it's the hair," Dorcas mused before shaking her head, snapping herself out of thoughts of Lily's romantic allure and quickly refocusing and Hermione's distinct lack thereof, at least by the brunette's own self-assessment.
Dorcas had other contradictory thoughts on the matter, not all of which she planned on sharing with Hermione just then. Specifically, she had quite a lot of thoughts on her friend's continued and undeniable (to everyone but the two key parties involved, anyway) chemistry with a certain Marauder and black sheep of the Black family. Given that she was not overly keen on getting one of her eyes jabbed out with a quill (they were, as her mother and countless others regularly informed her, such a mesmerizing shade of blue) Dorcas kept this little observation to herself. It'd certainly backfired spectacularly the last time she had attempted to bring it up.
"Anyway," the blonde continued, "my point is that Potter and Snape are anomalies. Most boys will be more than happy to have a bit of casual fun with you if that's all you're looking for."
"That sounds so…crass," Hermione ventured unsurely, wrinkling her nose like some sort of Victorian maiden offended by mere talk of such improprieties.
"It doesn't have to mean sex," Dorcas reasoned. "Or anything physical at all, even. Not if you don't want it to." She paused, giving Hermione a measured look before continuing on. "It's alright, though. If you want it to be physical. There's nothing wrong with wanting sex. Or with having it, if you want to."
Hermione shifted awkwardly, shoving the sleeves of her white oxford up to the elbows before wrenching a hair tie off her wrist in order to begin corralling her hair into a ponytail. Suddenly she felt entirely too warm; her usual mass of curls stifling. And Dorcas was just looking at her, as though she knew exactly what kind of vague but tantalizing dreams Hermione had begun having lately.
"Look at Black and Rebecca Forrester," Dorcas suggested, just as Hemione was finishing off her ponytail, causing the muggleborn witch to pull too tightly at her hair, aggravating the attached nerve endings.
"What about them?" Hermione snapped, rubbing absently at her stinging scalp. "They broke up! And besides, I hardly think those two are the pair I should be looking toward as a model of romantic aspiration."
Dorcas shrugged. "Maybe not," she allowed. "But, it doesn't exactly sound to me as if you have much in the way of 'romantic aspirations', Hermione," she said carefully, as though afraid she might spook the other girl with her words if she didn't tread lightly here. "Not strictly speaking. It sounds to me as if what you want is to have a bit of harmless fun. And Black and Rebecca Forrester certainly had that."
Hermione bit her lip, still grappling with all that Dorcas had said and attempting to parse her own reaction to it.
"Look," the blonde advised, "just give it some thought, Hermione. Figure out what it is you actually do want, and then come back to me, and we'll make it happen," Dorcas said definitively, her typical confidence as evident as ever. Hermione let that easy assuredness wash over her, taking comfort in it even if she couldn't share it.
"Now," Dorcas said playfully, initiating a change in tone and interrupting Hermione's muddled thoughts with a single word and a tilt of her head. The blonde proceeded to haul Hermione's feet up onto her lap, peeling off her grey, wool knee-socks and tossing them carelessly to floor once she'd fully divested the muggleborn of them. "You promised that if I deigned to give you my highly sought after advice," Hermione snorted, but Dorcas merely raised an eyebrow at her and continued on, "you'd not only let me paint your toenails, but also pick the color."
"If you insist," Hermione said, but she was smiling. As always, Dorcas made herself far too easy to indulge. "But remember, you promised, nothing outrageous!"
"I remember doing no such thing!" Dorcas insisted, producing a bottle of screamingly fuchsia nail varnish from seemingly nowhere and brandishing it like a weapon. "Your toes will soon be a glorious shade of pink, and you will secretly revel in it!"
"Alright, alright!," Hermione agreed, settling back against the sofa in a relaxed pose, feet propped ready in Dorcas' lap. "I submit!" No one was going to see her toenails anyway.
Sirius Black did not have a foot fetish. Or at least, he hadn't thought he did. Yet there he currently was, stood in the common room and stopped dead at the base of the boy's staircase, staring at Hermione Granger's bare feet with a look on his face that, given the context, suggested he just might have some kind of foot fetish. Thank Godric he was alone.
Remus was off on Prefect patrol with Evans, the red head's presence meaning James would insist on extracting every mind-numbingly boring, insignificant detail of their patrol from Remus the moment he returned. Personally, as Sirius had no desire witness, much less participate in, this embarrassing interrogation, he'd gotten the hell out of the dorm a full 15 minutes before Moony was due back, leaving James and Peter alone to learn whether Evan's had switched shampoos recently or not. What he hadn't expected as a result of his escape to the Common Room was to learn embarrassing and potentially disturbing information about himself; namely that the sight of Granger's bare feet propped up in Meadow's lap was obviously doing something for him. Not for the first time (far from the first time) Sirius wondered what the fuck was wrong with him.
He'd never seen Granger's bare feet before, and there something intensely endearing about them to him for some reason. Meadow's had obviously been painting Granger's toe nails at some point, the vile scent of nail varnish still hanging around enough to irritate Sirius' nasal passages, even all the way across the room. Unfortunately, this minor unpleasantness was doing nothing to help blunt his confused reaction to the scene before him.
It shouldn't have been enticing at all, really, Sirius told himself, continuing to stare nonetheless. There was nothing overtly…erotic about what Granger and Meadows were doing. They were just sitting together, chatting. Except, well-there was a kind of suggested intimacy to how incredibly at ease the two of them were with each other, physically; the unthinking way that Granger had draped her stretched out legs (and how, Sirius wondered, was it possible for a girl as short as Granger to have such endless seeming legs) over Meadows' crossed ones, one of her bare feet resting casually in the center of the blonde's lap, drifting slightly up under the edge of her uniform skirt. With one minuscule, little extension of her foot, Granger would have been able to press it right up against Meadows' pussy.
How would Meadow's react to that, Sirius wondered? Maybe the blonde would smile mischievously and let Granger tease her for a bit before tugging the other girl fully up over her lap to straddle her. Granger's skirt wasn't overly short or anything, she wasn't one of those girls who pushed the limit by hemming her uniform skirt as short as she could possibly get away with, but Sirius could vividly imagine how far pushed up it might get if she were to climb on top of Meadows, especially if the blonde helped it along a bit. Because how would Meadows be able to resist running her hands up and down Granger's thighs, edging her skirt up further and further as she did? Sirius could feel himself getting hard at the thought of it, stiffening up as he imagined Granger and Meadows snogging and grinding together until they brought one another off, their fingers dipping helpfully under each other's skirts and into each other's knickers.
When he'd thought about it before (and he had thought about it before), Sirius almost always imagined Granger in dark, solid colored knickers, usually black ones, that contrasted strikingly with her pale skin. Meadows he could imagine being a little more off the wall; something neon, or with polka dots, probably. Speculation about Granger's and Meadows' various underwear choices certainly wasn't going to help Sirius get rid of the rapidly growing problem in his own pants, though, so he quickly tried to stop thinking about it. He really needed to get ahold of himself. Mentally, Sirius added hurriedly, as his body seemed to have other instinctual physical impulses at the moment which would be impossible to satisfy in the middle of the bloody Common Room, and would have to wait till later to be dealt with. He sucked in a deep breath of air through his nose, the acrid scent of the still lingering nail varnish doing something to bring him out of his fantasy and back to the present.
The present, where Meadow's was idly resting one hand on the inside of Granger's knee, the latter's thighs having fallen slightly apart at some point, her pose making Sirius want to elbow Meadow's out of the way and insert himself between Granger's limbs. Fuck. He really needed to get the hell out of here. Sirius swore softly, spinning around and heading right back up the boys' staircase, entirely heedless of Dorcas Meadows' eyes pinned to the back of his head, following him knowingly.
In the weeks since her conversation with Dorcas regarding her (heretofore lack of) romantic life, Hermione had begun to, shall we say, more consciously consider her options when it came to such matters. In the spirit of this, she was currently engaged in a conversation with Amos Diggory, who seemed to be somewhere along in the process of asking her to study with him later that evening. This was a pretty good strategy for asking Hermione out, if that was indeed what the Hufflepuff intended, since the curly haired witch wasn't entirely opposed to studying in company, and nor was she entirely opposed to Amos Diggory himself.
"You're likely already better at Transfiguration than me, anyway," Amos was saying, sending a charming smile her way. "You could probably help me out!"
"Possibly," Hermione allowed with a smile of her own for the Hufflepuff boy, quietly flattered. "I do hear studying in pairs has the potential to be mutually beneficial for both parties."
Amos laughed, the sound reverberating pleasantly around the corridor outside the Defense classroom. "Yes, I've heard that as well. Tonight then? The library, say, seven o'clock?
"Alright," Hermione agreed, wondering if her voice actually did sound that ridiculously breathy in actuality or if she was simply having some kind of unfortunate auditory hallucination. "I'll see you then."
Which is how Hermione later found herself spending a perfectly pleasant Wednesday evening in the library with Amos Diggory in what amounted to a successful, if rather innocuous, first date.
As it turned out, Hermione discovered, it was actually quite easy to find yourself casually dating someone. Once, that is, you were over the initial awkward hurdle of the thing that was the inception of the relationship. After her first 'study date' with Amos, over the course of which it became obvious that the two of them did indeed enjoy one another's company, they simply...kept spending time together. Hermione wouldn't have said that Amos was her boyfriend (in fact, she was forced to deny this repeatedly, which turned out to be the most annoying aspect of the entire experience), but they were, as Lily had taken to putting it 'going together'. Dorcas thought this phrase was laughably 1950's, but Hermione accepted it easily, given that it was essentially accurate. She and Amos went quite a lot of places together over the last few months of 1975.
In a continuation of the trend set by their first date, they mainly studied together. Amos may not have been quite as naturally enamored of academics as Hermione was, but he was set to take his NEWTS in a few months' time, and that necessitated a great amount of time spent on revision. The work he put into his studies, even if it didn't always come naturally to him, and it was clear that much of the time he'd rather be doing other things, was something that impressed Hermione about Amos. She supposed it was the Hufflepuff in him. Unlike Ron undoubtedly would have, he never begged Hermione to do his homework for him during their study sessions. Amos was just happy to study alongside her, saying that her company made the activity marginally more bearable, which always made Hermione smile. He wasn't selfish with her either, never minding when Lily (or, less frequently, Dorcas) joined them in the library.
Contrary to Dorcas' teasing, though, they did do more than just study. She and Amos went for the occasional walk around the Black Lake, weather permitting, but more often simply wandered around the castle talking. Their conversations were never deeply personal, but Dorcas had assured Hermione that such acts of emotional divulgence weren't necessary in the kind of casual relationship she had with Amos, and she was perfectly happy to stick to relatively light topics with him. Mostly, she enjoyed the feel of his hand in hers and they way he looked like a very young, blonde Rock Hudson.
"He does," Lily agreed, nodding decisively when Hermione shared this assessment with her. "His eyes are more like Paul Newman's color wise, but Diggory doesn't really have that kind of devilishness in him."
"No," Hermione mused. "I suppose he doesn't." She paused, shooting a sly, sideways glance at her red headed friend before saying , very deliberately. "Amos more than makes up for that with certain other qualities, though."
"Oh?" Lily prodded excitedly, her curiosity sufficiently captured, just as Hermione had intended it to be. For once, the muggleborn witch was as eager to gossip as Dorcas usually was. "Do tell!" Lily pleaded.
Despite her desire to share, Hermione found herself blushing. "Well," she began delicately, "for one thing, he's a very good kisser."
Lily's mouth fell open briefly in a round, little, 'o' of shock, before she tipped her head back, laughing delightedly. "Hermione Granger, you've been holding out on me!" she admonished, smacking her friend lightly on the shoulder. "How long has this been going on?!"
Hermione smiled. "A few weeks now," she confessed somewhat self-consciously, ducking her head. "It's been really nice."
And it had been, Hermione reflected. She hadn't exaggerated to Lily, Amos was a good kisser, a fact she'd had ample time to discover for herself over the last fortnight or so, since that day Hogsmeade when he'd first initiated one with her. Thus far, things had progressed rather chastely between them, but Hermione was fine with that. Kissing Amos was like sinking into a deliciously hot bath after a tiring day; warm and pleasant, the most pleasing way to relax and distract herself from her myriad of worries. So far they hadn't done anything beyond extended snogging sessions, and Hermione hadn't yet been seized by the uncontrollable desire to take things anywhere beyond kissing with the Hufflepuff seventh year, but she very much did enjoy what they were doing currently. Shaking herself from her haze of dreamy remembrance, Hermione refocused on Lily, blushing anew under the red head's knowing gaze.
"What about you?" she asked, ready to change the subject. "Anyone on your horizon lately?"
"Romantically?" Lily asked with a raised eyebrow, letting out a bitter snort at Hermione's nod of confirmation. "No one will even so much as flirt with me, because they're all afraid of what Potter would do to them if they did," Lily said frustratedly. "It's so ridiculously antiquated! It's like he has this claim on me, because he's popular and everyone knows he likes me. And for some reason the entire male population of Hogwart's seems to respect that more than they do my own agency in the matter. It's so unfair! Not that I'm interested in dating anyone who's afraid of Potter, so I guess it's a good screening process. But still. It feels like everyone's just waiting for me to fall in line and date him, like they think it's inevitable I'll give into his charms eventually," Lily fell back against the couch, letting out a heavy sigh.
"Severus and Remus are the only boys who talk to me like I'm a real, actual person," she continued quietly. "And Remus' loyalty is to Potter first, so it wouldn't matter whether we were interested in each other or not, anyway. As for Sev…he's my best friend, Hermione. I've never wanted to date him. But he's been more distant than ever this year, and I'm afraid I'm losing him entirely," she finished sadly.
"Oh, Lily," Hermione said, leaning forward to hug her friend, her heart breaking for the red head. "I'm so sorry."
Even if James was largely oblivious to the adverse effect that his many, public declarations of affection for Lily were having on her, and even if Hermione knew that the two of them would eventually be very happy together, this still didn't seem like a fair situation.
Lily pulled away after a moment, sitting up and wiping discretely at the unshed tears which had begun to gather in the corners of her eyes. "Sorry," she apologized, forcing a watery laugh. "I didn't mean to emotionally unload on you all at once like that.
"It's okay," Hermione assured her. "Someday we'll find a boy who's worthy of you, Lils," she said confidently, knowing that while James Potter wasn't that boy yet, in time he would be. "I swear it. And in the meantime, don't accept anything less."
"Never!" Lily declared, her laugh a more natural one this time. "You either, Hermione, I mean it," she said seriously. "It seems like a good thing you've got with Diggory, but don't ever let him go breaking your heart. No boy is worth that, no matter how good of a kisser he happens to be," she said sagely.
Hermione nodded, but in the back of her mind, she had a funny, unformed intimation that if any boy were capable of breaking her heart, it certainly wasn't Amos Diggory. The eventual end of their relationship was inevitable, and Hermione knew that. She certainly wasn't destined to be Cedric Diggory's mother, of that she was sure. But that didn't mean she couldn't enjoy spending time with, and snogging, the man who would eventually be his father.
Remus, alone among the Marauder's, was unequivocally happy that Hermione had begun dating Amos Diggory. First and foremost, the Hufflepuff Seventh year seemed to be making her happy, which was the main bit. Remus hadn't interacted with Diggory much himself, but from their few, brief interactions the werewolf judged him to be a relatively inoffensive, if slightly pompous, bloke. He seemed good for Hermione, and Remus was genuinely happy for her. Lily and Meadows also both seemed to like him, and Remus thought the two girls were each decent judges of character, even if Meadows was a bit nutty and, considering Lily's hatred of James and her disdain for Sirius and Peter, that served as something of an indictment of his own friend group.
James and Sirius, of course, both hated Diggory's guts, ostensibly because of quidditch, and Peter was perfectly happy to enthusiastically mime this dislike. Remus knew that the source of James' antipathy toward the Hufflepuff was sincerely and solely quidditch related, but Sirius wasn't fooling anyone but himself (and possibly Peter) by pretending that the only reason he hated Diggory was because he happened to be a way half decent chaser. Whatever Sirius had deluded himself into thinking, Remus felt that he was just as obsessed with Hermione as James was with Lily, and it was clear from his behavior that Sirius remained frustratingly, irrationally possessive of her despite his inability to admit, even to himself, that he liked her at all. Frankly, it was getting old.
It wasn't even necessarily that Remus had ever liked Hermione as anything beyond a friend himself; he wasn't sure that he had. What really pissed him off about the situation was Sirius's stubborn lack of either willingness or ability to examine and deal with his own emotions regarding her (or anything, really). That and the fact that if Remus ever had liked Hermione as more than a friend, he wouldn't have been able to do anything about it because of Sirius. And over feelings his fellow Marauder wouldn't even admit to having in the first place. It was beyond frustrating.
Remus knew exactly how Sirius would have reacted if he'd ever openly expressed interest in Hermione; he would have pretended not to care, but secretly he would have been upset. And when Sirius was upset, especially about things he didn't want to talk about or examine, he lashed out and generally went around behaving like a moody, emotionally stunted prick with barely suppressed anger issues. Remus had no desire to have that kind of behavior personally directed at him, as he had no desire to be forced (as he had been before) to punch Sirius in the face. Though maybe that would have gone a way toward helping set him straight, so Remus supposed he ought to reconsider. What Remus really ought to do, he knew, was talk to Sirius about all of this. But it wasn't that he hadn't tried before. He had, multiple times. Sirius simply didn't want to, or wasn't ready, to listen to him about it, and quite honestly Remus was sick of trying to get him to right now.
The werewolf took a deep breath. As damning as his internal monologue was at the moment, and as frustrated as he could get with Sirius, he still loved him, pigheaded sod that he was. James may have been his best friend on paper, and in the minds of the majority of the population of Hogwarts (maybe even in Sirius' own mind, which Remus would pretend didn't hurt him) but Remus thought he understood the Black heir better than James ever could. James' instinct had always been to turn away from the darkest parts of Sirius, but Remus, for better or worse, had always been drawn into them. Sometimes it was difficult knowing him so well. But if Sirius exhausted Remus, Remus could scarcely begin to imagine how much he must have exhausted himself.
Hermione was not terribly surprised when Amos eventually invited her to a private Slugclub event as his guest. The fact that he was a member of the Slugclub, which might have normally been a detractor for Hermione in a potential partner, had been part of the reason she'd pursued a relationship with Amos in the first place, or rather, allowed herself to be pursued by him. Did that make her as coldly calculating as Dumbledore, she wondered? Amos' status as a semi-regular attendee of Slugclub events hadn't been Hermione's only consideration when she'd first accepted his invitation to study together, but it certainly had lingered in the back of her mind, pushing her forward into his arms. More and more, Hermione had begun to think that if not for her parentage, she might ought to have been a Slytherin.
She was remarkably well suited for politics, if she did say so herself, though she supposed she did get deeply emotional when it came to certain issues, which would undoubtedly be considered a liability by some. But being entirely dispassionate at all times was also a liability, or at least Hermione thought it was.
"I can't believe you're going to the Slugclub Christmas party," Lily said, helping to lace Hermione into the gown she'd chosen for the occasion, a frosty, silver number which Amos had insisted on purchasing for her as a gift. Despite the gallantry of this gesture, Hermione had been mildly uncomfortable accepting it from him. Her allowance from Dumbledore was not ungenerous, and she was much more comfortable taking money from the Headmaster than she was from her not-quite-boyfriend. But Amos had been adamant, pointing out that Hermione wouldn't have even needed a dress in the first place were it not for his wanting her to accompany him to the party. In the end she'd allowed him to get the dress for her, albeit reluctantly.
"Accepting unnecessary gifts is just one of the many perks of being in a relationship, Hermione," Dorcas had said when she'd expressed her discomfort. "Embrace it."
A far more valuable perk, though one that Dorcas couldn't have possibly been aware of, was the fact that Amos' invitation was going to allow Hermione close, non-classroom contact with Professor Slughorn in a setting where he would almost assuredly be drinking mulled wine. The Potion Master's own Christmas party was about to provide Hermione with the most ideal opportunity she'd likely get to subtly interrogate the man about his long ago relationship with Tom Riddle. She had a feeling the mulled wine was going to come in very handy.
"I can't believe you're going to the Slugclub Christmas party," James said, watching in bemusement as Sirius tucked his flask, the monogrammed one, into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. "You hate all that shite."
Sirius patted the flask. "Which is why I'm bringing a flask full of Elvish vodka to numb myself for the duration of the proceedings."
James shook his head. "You drink too much, mate."
"Live fast, die young," Sirius said, smiling broadly in that hollow way he did sometimes. It always made James and Peter vaguely uncomfortable, though neither of them ever said anything.
Remus snorted. "Calm down James Dean," he said dryly, and then, eyeing Sirius' wrist. "I can't believe you're wearing cuff links. Though I do commend your commitment to wearing muggle formal wear to every possible formal wizarding occasion, so keep that up."
"Cheers mate."
"I still don't understand why you're going, Padfoot," James insisted..
"My cousin Narcissa corned me on the grounds and threatened to shove my arse into the Whomping Willow and get it to strangle me if I didn't go," Sirius explained. "Daft bint has some stupid notion she's going to save me from getting disowned. As if I want to stay in my fuckfest of a family. She's always been surprisingly good at Herbology though, so…," he trailed off with a shrug.
James shook his head ruefully. "Your cousin might be as pale as a corpse, but she's surprisingly lively, isn't she Pads?"
AN: Next up, aint no party like a Slugclub party.
I really debated on including the "foot fetish" scene, but was too self-indulgent to leave it out in the end. I have a bad habit of projecting my (mild!) fetish for female feet onto fictional characters, and Sirius is my most common victim, because he's the HP guy I write most as a romantic lead.
I also love Dorcas, and while I see Hermione in this story as straight, I kind of love the thought of those two together so I was indulging in that too. Sorry! I am aware that this scene is probably the definition of 'male gaze-y', so I wrestled with it in that sense, but as someone attracted to women (I am very bi) it's hard for that not to be infused in my writing/characters.
update, I'm changing the rating to 'M', just to be safe and because we are approaching that point :)
REVIEW AND MORE IMPORTANTLY STAY SAFE AND HEALTHY! Love you guys!
