AN: So, I've updated this. Three years later. Does anyone still care about it? We shall see. I just updated Approaching Paradox yesterday, so I don't even feel guilty spending time on this one, which I have always planned on expanding on! Anyway, hope you like it!

Chapter 2: A Series of Excruciating Conversations

Hermione slipped into her room, shutting the door quietly behind her so as not to wake a still sleeping Ginny. Closing her eyes, she turned and sank against the wood of the now closed entrance, eventually sliding down to the floor and hugging her knees to her chest, letting her head fall into her hands. What had she just done? What had she been about to let Sirius do? Hermione tore her hands fretfully through her tangled curls, barely resisting the urge to tug so harshly at them that she removed anything valuable from her scalp. She'd already mucked things up enough this morning, she certainly didn't need to go making herself bald on top of everything.

Her hair was going to be an absolute nightmare to brush out later, Hermione thought grimly as she carefully extracted her fingers from the wild curls. Not that the pain when she finally did so wouldn't be well deserved. She doubted her hair would be nearly such a mess if she hadn't spent the preceding night rolling around in the bed of her best friend's Godfather. Despite her momentary preoccupation with her curls, Hermione was well aware of the fact that what had happened this morning (and last night) between her and Sirius was going to have ramifications way beyond the current, disastrous state of her hair.

For one thing, she suspected she was never going to be able to look at the man again without blushing, which was going to make breakfast in a few hours an extraordinarily awkward affair. Oh Godric, Hermione realized with a mounting sense of horror, she was probably going to light up bright red around Sirius now the same way that Ginny had used to around Harry, except for reasons far less innocent. How was she supposed to so much as exist in the same room as him without remembering the way his body had felt against hers, the way he'd touched her?

She was having a difficult enough time trying to forget about it now, and that was with the benefit of an entire expanse of hallway between them. For Merlin's sake, she was still wet, her body not yet having caught up with her mind in its classification of what she'd just experienced with Sirius as bad. And it was bad, Hermione told herself firmly, very bad, no matter how good it had felt. Because it had happened with Sirius, and she definitely was not supposed to do things like that with her best friend's godfather.

She probably wasn't meant to be doing things like that at all. Hermione knew that's what Molly Weasley would probably say anyway, but if she was doing them then she certainly wasn't meant to be doing them with Sirius. Hermione should have been fumbling around unsurely with boys her own age, ones who were just as inexperienced as her, not being touched with such easy, erotic confidence by a 36 year old man. Not that he'd meant to do any of it any more than she had. Less, actually, if Hermione were honest. Sirius had clearly been under the impression she was some sort of dream for the duration of the key events, and the moment he'd woken up properly and realized who she was, he'd been completely horrified. In point of fact, he'd quite literally flung himself bodily out of his own bed, which wasn't exactly a flattering reaction to someone realizing they were in bed with you, even if, rationally, Hermione knew that Sirius had been right to remove himself from the situation as quickly as possible.

Hermione was the one who'd been awake the whole time, who'd let Sirius touch her the way he had even though she'd been fully cognizant of his identity and just how wrong that made what was happening between them. And she'd just lain there and let it go on because she'd been scared and confused and hadn't known what to do. And then eventually she'd done more than lay there, because it had felt good and she'd forgotten that she'd been trying to figure out how to get herself out of the situation she was in, because all she could concentrate on was how good she felt and she forgot everything else but that.

And sweet Merlin, Sirius had made her feel good. Hermione had to admit that. Actually, she recalled with a mounting sort of horror, she believed she already had admitted it. To Sirius. Aloud, in the aftermath of everything. 'It felt so good' she thought she had said, or something equally ridiculous but embarrassingly true. Hermione squirmed. Godric, it was humiliating. Sirius had clearly been utterly horrified by the entire situation. He obviously saw her as a stupid little girl, an impression she'd no doubt cemented when she'd been word-vomiting at him about how good it felt when he touched her in places no one ever had before.

Not that it wouldn't have been obvious to him what a slutty, dripping little harlot she was anyway, Hermione thought caustically, continuing her internal self-flagellation. Her knickers remained completely soaked even now, her body still flushed with heady arousal and hypersensitive to touch. As though controlled by someone else, Hermione found herself trailing a hand across the sliver of midriff exposed between her sleep shirt and her shorts, gasping when the normally innocuous action made her hips jolt upward involuntarily. That's how Sirius had started with her, she reflected hazily, by letting his finger trail across her stomach; teasing her, playing with her. She'd had no idea such an action was capable of getting her so riled up, but obviously it was. That was all it had taken for her to begin to lose herself to him, to the way he'd touched her.

Godric, she was still so wet, Hermione realized as she dipped her hand into her pajama shorts, casting an anxious, fruitive glance toward the bed where Ginny was sleeping as she did so. Luckily, it appeared that her friend remained entirely oblivious to the world, at least if the redhead's light, shuffling snores served as any indication of her state of awareness. Hermione moved her hand even lower, letting her fingers brush lightly against the front of her still thoroughly saturated knickers. She struggled to contain a gasp, cupping her sex in an imitation of what Sirius had done not half an hour before. It wasn't as good; her own hand wasn't as large as the older man's had been, and Hermione missed the roughness of his fingers that she'd been able to feel even through the fabric of her panties, before he'd slipped them underneath and touched her even more intimately.

She rocked against her own hand, shuddering at the sensation, along with the irrefutable knowledge that Sirius had surely been able to feel how incredibly wet she'd been for him. Of course, his cock had been jutting eagerly and undeniably against her bum at the time, but he hadn't known it was her bum it was jutting into. She, on the other hand, had absolutely known who was behind her, cock poised against her arse. In point of fact, Hermione had been unable to keep from moaning Sirius' name, which was, of course, what had ruined everything. Maybe if she'd just have been able to keep quiet, Sirius wouldn't have stopped what he'd been doing. Maybe he would have actually slid some of those rough fingers inside of her instead of just playing with her folds.

Hermione bit her lip against a moan at the thought, roughly tugging aside her knickers and inserting one of her own, considerably slimmer than she would have preferred, fingers into her sex. She set her thumb against her clit at the same time, teasing herself in an imitation of the way Sirius had earlier that morning. He'd been able to zero in on her clit immediately, even half asleep as he'd been, and anytime he'd shied away from it while touching her had been a purposeful torture inflicted deliberately for her pleasure, she was sure of it. Hermione was now biting her lip painfully hard, determined to be quiet this time. She was capable of controlling herself, no matter that she was currently masturbating on the floor of her room (her room in Sirius' house, where she was a guest solely because of her close friendship with Harry) imagining that her best friend's godfather was the one fingering her and rubbing her clit.

Hermione moved her free hand up to one of her breasts, tweaking a nipple and finding herself suddenly, bitterly disappointed that Sirius hadn't touched her there as well. Surely he would have eventually, if things had continued; would have slid his hands further up her thin t-shirt and cupped her breasts, massaging them and teasing her nipples to hardness as she was doing now. Would he have been gentle with them or rough, Hermione wondered, incapable of determining at the moment which option she might have preferred. She hated to think that he might have been disappointed with them. Hermione was never going to be the largest chested girl, but she liked her own breasts well enough, and she swore that Sirius had been staring at them in the aftermath of everything, when she'd been trying, inadequately and disjointedly, to explain what had happened.

He'd look distinctly horrified, of course, but Hermione dared to hope that Sirius' expression of horror was the result of the broader situation they'd found themselves in, and not because of the sight of her breasts specifically. They'd fit quite well in his hands, she thought, it'd be a pity if he didn't like them. Hermione resolved to find out later exactly how see through this particular sleep shirt was. Now, she imagined Sirius pulling it off her, staring at her breasts in wonder before reaching out for them, taking their weight in his hands and palming them eagerly, smiling at her as he teased her. It was a much easier scenario for Hermione to contemplate than the actual act of sex, which she shied away from imagining even in the current deepest throes of her fantasy. She had no problem, though, imagining Sirius's fingers moving inside her in place of her own as she rubbed furiously at her clit, eventually finding her release with a breathy, hastily aborted cry.

When the endorphins faded, Hermione was left feeling completely disgusted with herself, biting her lip not to contain cries of pleasure or pleading utterances of Sirius' name, but to keep from crying. Slowly, she withdrew her hand from her knickers, eyeing her glistening fingers, covered with ample evidence of her arousal, in horrified fascination and shame. Her sopping knickers clung to her skin uncomfortably now in a cooling, sticky mess. Hermione kept them on as she climbed back into bed, the discomfort of them serving as a twisted sort of punishment.

Sirius had absolutely no intention of telling anyone about what had happened with Hermione. Ever. So of course Remus figured most of it out almost immediately.

In a case of incredibly bad coincidental timing (for Sirius anyway) the werewolf stopped by during breakfast in order to deliver some bit of news which Sirius found himself entirely incapable of absorbing. He remained, quite involuntarily and much to his detriment, occupied with Hermione, who, in yet another unfortunate coincidence, had been ushered into the chair directly across from him by Molly Weasley, perpetual bane of his existence. From such a vantage point, it was impossible for Sirius not to look at the girl, and equally impossible for him not to note that she was obviously not wearing a bra. Did she not own one, Sirius wondered? Did girls in the 90's simply not wear bras at all anymore? Harry had introduced him to some American muggle television program a while ago called 'Friends', in which you always seemed to be able to see all of the actress' nipples in vivid clarity. In his current state of growing hysteria, Sirius speculated that perhaps that was where Hermione was taking her fashion inspiration from. She was muggle born. She'd probably seen the blasted program, even if it was American.

In any case, Sirius could certainly see her nipples, poking through the material of her shirt like taunting beacons of unfulfilled arousal just begging to be flicked. He was living a nightmare, Sirius realized. A complete and utter nightmare. This was worse than Azkaban; infinitely worse. And while he was busy staring at her nipples, Hermione was staring resolutely at the table top, face aflame, looking as though she absolutely wanted to die, an inclination Sirius could certainly sympathize with at that moment.

"Fuck me," he muttered, letting his head fall into his hands, heedless of the looks, ranging from puzzled concern (Remus and Harry) to annoyed (Molly), that this action garnered him. Though only Remus would have been able to hear what he'd said, it was probably blatantly obvious to the entire table at that point that Sirius was currently in the throes of some sort of crippling, psychological melt down. He could only hope that most of them would assume he was merely hungover. Moony though, Sirius knew, would be able to smell that he hadn't overly indulged last night, at least not in terms of booze. Unfortunately for the animagus, his lack of alcohol over consumption the previous evening wouldn't be all the werewolf was able to discern with his overly acute sense of smell.

"So," Remus began, having managed to corner Sirius alone on the second floor landing of his own house in the immediate aftermath of the bizarrely disastrous breakfast he'd just witnessed. "Care to explain what happened back there, Padfoot?"

Sirius let his head thump back heavily against the wall, welcoming the pain of it and only valiantly refraining from doing it again when he noticed that Remus was now eyeing him as though he might be unhinged.

"Not particularly," Sirius said morosely, raising his hand to run it distractedly through his slightly over long hair.

It was this unthinking action which damned him.

"You've slept with someone then," Remus said simply, nodding knowingly at Sirius' hand, which was now frozen somewhere in the vicinity of his face. It was then, with a dawning horror, that Sirius realized that if he could still smell Hermione on his hand, Moony definitely could.

"Explain to me why, exactly, that's causing you an existential crisis," Remus demanded, bewildered by Sirius' behavior. "I know it's been quite a long time for you, Padfoot, but surely it wasn't that bad."

"I haven't slept with anyone!" Sirius protested, his voice coming out alarming high-pitched as he attempted to reassure himself of this fact as much as to convince Remus of the technical truth of it.

"Right," the werewolf said slowly, eyeing Sirius still raised hand skeptically. "So even though you clearly did something with this woman, whoever she is, you're upset that you didn't manage to actually sleep with her? Is that it?"

"No," Sirius said firmly, which was both emphatically true and yet also, on some shameful level, undeniably a lie. "I haven't slept with anyone," he repeated stubbornly.

"Sirius, what the fuck?" Remus said exasperatedly, obviously beginning to grow frustrated with him. "Just tell me what's going on, then."

"I don't want to talk about it," Sirius ground out mulishly, going so far as to fold his arms obstinately across his chest. Remus raised an eyebrow at the childish, defensive gesture. He didn't have to be a werewolf to sense the obvious shame that was now wafting off his animagus friend in waves of tangible, sick guilt. It was, frankly, oppressive and Remus was becoming increasingly concerned.

"Sirius, what did you do?" he pressed.

Sirius let his head fall back against the wall again with an audible thunk. He was very intent on at least mild self-harm this morning. "Something terrible," he whispered, and Remus was left to hope his friend was being as needlessly melodramatic as usual, though he was beginning to fear, based on Sirius' alarming behavior, that he wasn't.

"Is this a discussion we should be having the middle of the hallway?" Remus asked lowly.

Sirius sighed. "Probably not," he said, beckoning Remus towards the stairs and leading the other man up to his room; the scene of the crime, as it were. Sirius grimaced, slamming the door behind the both of them and throwing up a silencing charm for good measure, something he was apparently capable of remembering to do.

"It reeks of pheromones in here," Remus pointed out flatly once the door was shut. "Among other things," he added with a grimace of his own.

"Thanks, Moony, that's helpful," Sirius said tightly.

Remus wrinkled his nose. In a completely horrifying way, though, the werewolf was actually perversely comforted by the scent of female arousal which still lingered thickly in the air. Not that he actually thought Sirius capable of sexually assaulting someone, and not that arousal automatically indicated consent but—"What happened here, Sirius?" he asked, hastily cutting off his own train of thought. "Who could you have possibly fucked that it has you this rattled?"

"Hermione," Sirius said miserably, bracing himself for when Remus inevitably lunged at him, which the werewolf predictably did, slamming him hard into the wall. Fuck, he was going to feel that one in the morning.

"You did what?" Remus growled, still holding him to the wall.

"Technically, we didn't actually have sex. But as good as, Remus, fuck," Sirius said raggedly, and he must have looked properly devastated because Remus loosened his hold on him slightly.

"Explain," the werewolf commanded.

"I had a nightmare last night," Sirius started, looking physically pained. "I forgot to cast a silencing charm, because I'm a fucking idiot, and Hermione must have heard me, because she came in and woke me up," Sirius related dully, like a child who had misbehaved and was now being forced to reluctantly explain their own misdeeds. "Which would have been fine on its own, but she insisted on staying after. I know I shouldn't have let her, Moony, but I was tired and she insisted, and I swear to god, when I fell back asleep she was still in the arm chair. I never would have dreamed she'd fucking crawl into bed with me!"

Remus sighed. "And how does Hermione crawling into bed with you progress to-," he gestured vaguely at Sirius' hand without looking at it, "that?"

"I thought I was dreaming," Sirius muttered shamefully, which even he had to admit sounded ludicrous in retrospect.

"And do you regularly have sex dreams about Hermione, then?" Remus wanted to know.

"Fuck, Moony, no!" Sirius said emphatically. "I didn't know it was her! I woke up a bit, only I didn't really know I was awake, and I just felt this body against me. It felt…nice," he admitted uncomfortably. "And I got hard, or I already was hard, I dunno, and she was sort of squirming around and pushing back into me, making these sounds, and obviously I didn't think it was fucking real. I've barely slept with anyone since I've gotten out of Azkaban, Moony, you know that. I just thought I was having a really good dream. So I went with it."

Remus looked fairly physically pained himself now. "And exactly how far did you, 'go with it', Sirius?"

The other man shrugged uncomfortably. This was excruciating to talk about, even to Remus, and a large part of that was tied up in the fact that somewhere buried beneath his shame, and not all that deeply, if he were truly honest, was the uncomfortable reality that even though he now knew that the person he'd been touching so intimately had been Hermione, the experience was still an undeniably erotic memory for him.

"I was just teasing her," Sirius said, stumbling awkwardly over the phrase, mostly because the woman (girl, Sirius amended, Hermione was still just a girl; for fuck's sake she was only 17) he'd been 'teasing' had turned out to be two decades younger than him and one of his Godson's best friends. "You know, touching her stomach, and pulling her hips into mine and—"

Remus threw up a hand, cutting him off. "Sirius! I neither need, nor want, this level of detail! Just tell me how far it ultimately went and be done with it!"

Sirius flushed involuntarily, his normally pale, aristocratic skin reddening. "Sorry," he apologized hastily. "I was just, er, easing into things with her," he explained, pausing to clear his throat before continuing, "I didn't even finger her, Moony, I just…touched her," he finished, trailing off helplessly.

Remus let out a long breath through his nose, looking as though he'd rather be participating in any conversation other than the one he was currently involved in. "I suppose that's…good," he said eventually.

"Good?" Sirius said incredulously, before letting out a harsh, bitter version of his bark like laugh. "You think this is good?"

"No, it's bloody fucking horrendous, but it could certainly be a lot worse, Padfoot!" Remus snapped.

"And how, exactly, could it be worse, Moony? Please, enlighten me."

"You could have actually fucked her," Remus said bluntly.

Sirius glared at the floor. "Reckon she might have stopped me before that point."

Remus wasn't so sure he agreed. The werewolf could smell the distinct scent of heavy female arousal thickly permeating the air, mixed with the familiar scent of Sirius' own desire, which he (unfortunately) recognized well enough after 7 years of sharing a dorm with the other man, although all of it was overlaid with the stench of shame and guilt. Based on his senses though, Remus honestly wasn't sure that Hermione would have stopped Sirius…before that point, but he didn't want to be the one to tip Padfoot over into the full on nervous break down it looked as though he were on the verge of, so he wasn't about to tell him that.

"What was it that—why did you stop?" he asked instead, haltingly.

"It should have been her smell that clued me in. I thought she smelled like Hermione, which was weird, but I figure a lot of women smell like…baked apples or whatever, so I just thought it was a coincidence, or my self-conscious being fucked up, but then she said my name," Sirius mumbled, still looking down, shamefaced. "A couple of times. Well, twice. And her voice, I realized…it was her. And as soon as I did, Moony, I threw myself out of bed, I've got a bruise on my arse the size of Bristol now," he said desperately, as though willing Remus to believe that he'd stopped the moment he'd recognized that he was with Hermione, which was Remus was sure that he had.

"I believe you, Sirius," he said quietly. "How did Hermione react?"

"She sort of sat up," Sirius related miserably, gesturing at his still mussed bed. "Looking panicked, and embarrassed but also, fuck, Rem, like I'd already…," he trailed off, dragging his hands agitatedly through his hair.

"Ah," Remus said faintly. "I see. Do you think she was, is, I mean, a virgin?" he asked hesitantly.

Sirius sighed heavily. "Yeah, I do."

"How do you—"

"Because, Moony, she told me, and I quote, that 'no had ever touched her there before'!" Sirius informed him, obviously on the verge of hysteria.

Remus flinched. "Oh, Pads," he said softly.

"You can't actually feel bad for me?" Sirius asked wildly, accusingly almost, as though to do so would be a grievous sin on Remus' part.

"Well, a bit."

Sirius looked utterly horrified with him, which Remus thought was a bit rich, given the situation. "I took something from her Moony!" he shouted. "I might not have actually fucked her but I was still her first—the first person to—her first sexual experience!" he yelled, and Remus was desperately grateful he'd remembered a silencing charm this time. "That should never have been with me, for her, I'm fucking old and—and me, and she should've gotten to have that with…somebody else, anybody else. Someone her own age at least, for Godric's sake! It's fucked!" Sirius said determinedly. "It's fucked."

"Are you done?" Remus asked mildly.

"Are you seriously acting like I'm overreacting to this?"

Remus sighed. "I don't think you're overreacting, Padfoot, and I'd be incredibly disturbed if you weren't upset about this, but I do think you have to accept that it happened, and go from there."

"And how, exactly, do you suggest I do that?" Sirius spat.

"By calming the fuck down, first of all."

"You want me to calm down?" Sirius asked disbelievingly. "Remus, I had sex with a 17 year old girl! I had sex with Hermione!"

"At least she's of age," Remus said practically. "And I think whether you had sex with her or not depends on your definition of the act. A few minutes ago you were insisting that you didn't have sex with her," he pointed out.

"Only on a technicality!"

"Well, given the…nature of the situation, I think we have to take that as a positive."

"Nothing about this is positive, Moony!" Sirius insisted, valiantly attempting to ignore his bodies opinion on the matter and focus instead on his disgust with himself. The two things were not actually unrelated.

"What if she's…not okay? What if she's traumatized?" he asked worriedly.

Remus sighed, yet again. It was possible Sirius had a point there. "I'll talk to her," he said.

"You'll talk to her?" Sirius echoed.

"Yes, I'll talk to her," Remus repeated, with infinite patience. "You just…stay here in your room for now and try to avoid her till she goes back to school."

As Hermione often did in times of distress, she found herself holed up in the library. She was not hiding precisely, but well…ok yes, she was hiding. Breakfast had been as perfectly excruciating as she'd imagined. Wholly against her will, and to his clear horror, she'd ended up seated directly across from Sirius. As she'd predicted, she hadn't even be able to so much as look at him, but she swore she'd felt the heavy weight of his gaze on her for the entirety of her meal, which she'd barely touched at all because she was entirely too mortified to even contemplate food. Had Sirius actually been staring at her, or had Hermione simply imagined it, she wondered? Hermione didn't know which scenario was worse, and she didn't know how she was supposed to interact normally with Sirius ever again.

She heard the library door open and, to her embarrassment, Hermione actually jumped slightly in fright. Sirius wouldn't come into the library would he? When he read, Hermione had noticed, he usually tended to do it in the study or one of the common areas. But obviously if he wanted a new book he'd have to visit the library to get one. How could she have been so stupid, Hermione chastised herself?! Why hadn't she just gone back to her room immediately after breakfast? Surely Sirius would have no reason to ever go in there. Hermione blushed involuntarily as she found her thoughts automatically drifting to possible reasons Sirius might have for seeking her out in her room. Not that he ever would, obviously. For one thing, she shared it with Ginny, and for another he was clearly repulsed by her. What was she even thinking? Godric, she was so stupid.

"Hermione," someone said cautiously, and she realized that she'd been so caught up in her panicked spiral of thoughts that she hadn't even noticed her ex-defense Professor standing right in front of her. For a fraction of a second, Hermione was actually relieved at the sight of him, because at least it wasn't Sirius, as she'd feared it might be. Not that she was afraid of Sirius, exactly, mind you, but she desperately didn't want to see him at the moment. Or possibly ever again. So she was momentarily relieved when she realized that it was Professor Lupin standing in front of her, and not his best friend, who just happened to be the Godfather of her best friend, and also 19 years older than her.

Then Hermione absorbed the look on Professor Lupin's face and all of her relief vanished in an instant. He was looking at her with the most peculiarly twisted up expression on his face, and seeming more deeply uncomfortable than she'd ever seen him. It was quite immediately obvious to her that Sirius had told him what had happened.

"You know, don't you?" Hermione said despondently, already certain that he did.

"Er," Professor Lupin said awkwardly, which was confirmation enough.

Hermione felt tears prick her eyes. "He told you?"

Professor Lupin sighed. "He didn't want to, Hermione," he said gently. "I'm sure he wouldn't have if I hadn't happened to come over this morning so soon after. But being that I did, it was sort of unavoidable."

"Unavoidable how?" Hermione demanded shrilly, and she saw Professor Lupin throw up a hasty silencing charm in response to her volume.

"I figured a lot of it out, Hermione," he said simply. "And so Sirius had to explain what happened."

"Figured it out how?" the young witch pressed, bewildered and once again on the verge of tears.

Professor Lupin looked deeply pained. "Hermione, please, it doesn't really matter, the point is that—"

"No, I want to know!" she insisted, cutting him off, which was something she'd never done before. She liked Professor Lupin, she certainly didn't normally make a habit of being rude to the man. But this was an exceptional situation and, in her panic, she that found she couldn't help herself. "If you figured it out, someone else might too!"

"They won't," Professor Lupin assured her sincerely, and then he looked upwards at the ceiling, as though searching in vain for divine intervention of some kind, and muttered, "no one else has as good of a sense of smell as I do."

Hermione blanched. "This is so humiliating I'm going to throw up," she declared faintly.

Professor Lupin rather looked as though he might be sick as well, before he made what was clearly a rallying effort to get ahold of himself. "Hermione," he said softly. "The reason I'm here is that we—that is to say, Sirius and I—wanted to make sure that you were alright."

"Do I seem alright to you, Professor?"

He sighed. "No. But I'm hoping you will be. In time," he paused, taking a seat in the armchair adjacent to her own. "You can talk to me about how you're feeling, Hermione. If you'd like," he said tentatively. And why did he have to be so...so terribly comforting and painfully nice? All Hermione wanted was to wallow in her misery in peace. Ideally alone.

"Nothing that you tell me would leave this room," Professor Lupin continued, his voice low and serious. "I won't say anything to anyone, not unless you give me explicit permission to do so, Hermione. Not even to Sirius."

He let his offer linger in the air.

"I feel stupid," Hermione whispered eventually, not looking at him. "And embarrassed."

"You shouldn't," Professor Lupin attempted to reassure her. "You didn't do anything wrong, Hermione."

"I did though," she said tearfully. "I should have—I should have left. He didn't know what was going on, but I did, and I just….," she trailed off, hanging her head, consumed with shame at her own actions.

"Hermione, correct me if I'm wrong in assuming here but…you'd never been in a situation like that before, had you?" Professor Lupin asked delicately.

Hermione shook her head. "No," she said, hiccupping around a sob, her cheeks burning and plastered with tears.

"It's alright that you didn't know what to do," Professor Lupin insisted. "The last thing Sirius is feeling right now is angry with you, and I know he wouldn't want you to be angry at yourself either, so you shouldn't be," he finished firmly.

"Ok," Hermione replied, not knowing how else to respond.

"Would it help you to know that Sirius is feeling just as wretched and guilty as you are at the moment, if not more so?"

"No," Hermione said, because it didn't. That only made her feel worse, if anything. "I just don't want him to hate me," she whispered.

Professor Lupin reached out, placing a hand hesitantly and lightly on her shoulder. "Oh sweetheart," he said softly, and so tenderly that it was mildly embarrassing, as was his unexpected use of the endearment in the first place. As if Hermione didn't already have more than enough to be embarrassed about. "Sirius doesn't hate you. He couldn't. It's just…going to take some time, I think. For things to normalize between the two of you. But you'll get there."

Hermione nodded, and even though she didn't quite believe him, she desperately hoped that Professor Lupin was right.

AN: This was way too much fun to write, I hope you enjoy reading it just as much! Please review and tell me what you thought, I live for it!